Trent Whisenant is the Apprenticeship Grant Program Manager at CareerWise New York, leading the organization through the execution of the many federal grants they receive to advance youth apprenticeship in New York City. Prior to joining CWNY, Trent was a Consulting Analyst at Ascend Indiana, a nonprofit workforce development organization in Indianapolis, where he worked with a team committed to developing high-quality work-based-learning opportunities for youth in Indy and throughout Indiana. His particular areas of focus were in occupational development, cultivating a Community of Practice, and devising creative solutions to the issues of youth transportation, persistence, and recruitment.

Trent has a Master of Music degree from the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University and Bachelors of Arts in Politics and Music from University of the South in Sewanee, TN. Having grown up in North Georgia, Trent spent much of his middle and high school years participating in 4-H, the nation’s largest youth development program, through leadership roles on the local, state, and national levels. The experience he relishes the most was as a Collegiate Facilitator for roundtable groups at the National 4-H Conference in Washington, D.C., returning three times to work with cohorts of ~20 high schoolers from across the country. Each of the topic areas culminated in the youth giving presentations to federal officials at agencies including the U.S. Department of Education, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), and the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA).