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Garrett Trey King serves as Vice President for Institutional Advancement & Chief of Staff to the President at Southwestern Oklahoma State University (SWOSU) with locations in Weatherford, Sayre, and Yukon, Oklahoma. He also serves as Executive Director of the SWOSU Foundation, Inc., and its subsidiaries, the SWOSU Alumni Association and the SWOSU Athletic Association.
Working with the Foundation Trustees as well as the Associational Directors, King leads a dynamic team of professionals in developing philanthropic partnerships and growing volunteer support for SWOSU’s ongoing mission and work. He directs efforts that raise millions of dollars in contributions that benefit SWOSU students, faculty, and programs while also overseeing the long-term investment and management of the institution’s endowment. During King’s tenure as head of Advancement, the University has received its largest gifts ever and has more than tripled its annual distribution of scholarship awards to SWOSU students while doubling its funding for SWOSU academic programs. King has spearheaded the deployment of a variety of new opportunities for SWOSU alumni, emeriti, and friends to connect with the university and to provide assistance to many worthy aspects of institutional life and activities.
From 2007 to 2014, King served on the personal staff of U.S. Representative Frank D. Lucas (OK-3) where his work focused on issues related to education, agriculture, Indian affairs, energy, transportation, and the environment. King represented Oklahoma on the Young Republican National Committee from 2008 to 2013 and in 2009 was named Oklahoma’s Young Republican of the Year.
King has served or is serving on the governing boards of the Oklahoma Educational Television Authority (OETA), the Oklahoma Policy Institute, the Oklahoma Institute for Child Advocacy, the General Tommy Franks Leadership Institute & Museum, Friends of the Weatherford Public Library, America’s Public Television Stations (APTS), Weatherford Community Habitat for Humanity, Friends of OETA, Weatherford Food & Resources Center, Wisdom Knot Basketball Camps, the Oklahoma-Israel Exchange, HOBY Oklahoma, and the local advisory board for Hope is Alive Ministries.
King was raised on a rural electrical cooperative-powered peanut farm and Black Angus beef cow/calf operation in the Oakdale Community near Eakly in northern Caddo County where his family has lived and worked since 1890 and where his early childhood was enriched by the Washita Valley Head Start Program. He is a 2004 graduate of Binger-Oney Public Schools (where his mother, a first-generation college graduate and SWOSU alumnae, taught fifth grade for over three decades and retired after serving as superintendent) and a 2008 alumnus of SWOSU where he studied history and political science as a beneficiary of both the Pell Grant and the Oklahoma’s Promise Scholarship Program as well as the Johnny Bench Scholars Program.
King holds an M. Ed. in social sciences and is currently a Ph.D. candidate in history at the University of Swansea in Wales. King met his wife, Carissa (Marquis) King when both were undergraduates at SWOSU. Following graduation from SWOSU, Carissa went on to study law at the University of Oklahoma; she is the founder of King Legal, an estate planning & probate law firm in western Oklahoma. She previously practiced law at Tisdal & O’Hara; Graft & Walraven; and Christensen Legal Group.
The Kings reside in Weatherford with their daughters, Nellie and Margie, who attend Weatherford Public Schools. The Kings are members of the Federated Church.
