T.W. Shannon was appointed by the Speaker of the House to the Transportation Commission in March 2019, representing District 3, an 11-county area of east-central Oklahoma. He briefly vacated the commission in March 2022 and was reappointed in September 2022.

In 2006, Shannon was elected to the Oklahoma House of Representatives at the age of 28, and became Oklahoma’s youngest and first African American Speaker of the Oklahoma House of Representatives in 2013.

Before becoming an elected official, he worked as a field representative for former Congressman J.C. Watts and Congressman Tom Cole and served as the Chief Administrative Officer for the Chickasaw Nation.

Shannon earned a Bachelor of Arts in communications from Cameron University and holds a Juris Doctorate from Oklahoma City University Law School. He and his wife have two children.