[3] Having been given a timeframe of 30 days to find a job in New York by her mother, Bennett was hired as an assistant by the American Museum of Natural History's Department of Public Education.
[7] In the evenings, Bennett attended anthropology classes at Columbia University, taught by Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict, and Alfred Radcliffe-Brown.
[11] In 1939, she left the Museum for a position as sales and promotion manager at University of Minnesota Press, publishing a bestselling biography of the Mayo brothers.
[18] In the 1960s, Bennett worked with the Berkeley Unified School District to create an interdisciplinary multimedia course called Educational Programming of Cultural Heritage (EPOCH), which lasted until 1969.
[19][20] After the end of EPOCH, Bennett and her companion, child psychologist Rosamund Gardner, moved to Taos, New Mexico where they built an adobe home.