M. Trent Blankenship

Marshall Trent Blankenship was born July 18, 1959, in Shattuck, Oklahoma, the son of Keith Albert Blankenship and Martha Antoinette Smith Blankenship, Oklahoma natives. At the age of three, after his father graduated from college, he and his family moved to Wyoming where his grandfather had homesteaded during the Oklahoma dust bowl.

Blankenship was reared in Pavillion, Wyoming. He graduated from Wind River High School, Kinnear, Wyoming in 1977. In 1987, Blankenship earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Secondary Education from the University of Wyoming. On August 6, 1986, Trent Blankenship married Shana Marie La Lomia Blankenship at Our Lady of the Black Hills Church in South Dakota. In 1991, he received his Master of Arts in Education Administration from UW and, in 1995, he was awarded the doctoral degree in Educational Leadership and Human Development from the University of Wyoming.

Blankenship began his education career as a classroom teacher and coach at Riverton Wyoming High School and in the early 1990s he held those positions at the Department of Defense Heidelberg High School in Heidelberg, Germany.

After returning to Wyoming, he moved into education administration, first as Assistant Principal at Sheridan Junior High School and then as Superintendent of Schools in Fremont and Carbon counties and in Wickenburg School District in Arizona. During his career, he also has lectured and served as associate professor of education at the University of Wyoming.

From 1984 to 1988, he served in the United States Army National Guard, Wyoming, 133rd Engineers.

In 2002, Blankenship was elected Wyoming State Superintendent of Public Instruction on the Republican ticket. He resigned his position in 2005 to become Superintendent of Schools, North Slope Borough School District, Alaska.

In March 2009, Blakenship returned to Wyoming and worked as an instructional facilitator at the Wyoming Indian School in Pavillion. In 2010, he again ran for Superintendent of Public Instruction, but was defeated in the primaries by Cindy Hill.

Trent and Shana Blankenship are parents of three children, Marshall Colton, Annawynn Marie, and Dylan Joseph.