2024 Professional Achievement Award

2024 SPRF Professional Achievement Award Recipient

Caron Blanton, APR, recently retired from the State of Mississippi having worked in communications in the education sector for more than 30 years. Her roles included working on  the K-12, community college and university level, serving as Director of Communications for the Mississippi Board of Trustees of State Institutions of Higher Learning for 12 years prior to retirement. 

She now works in communications for Entergy Mississippi, which provides electricity to approximately 459,000 customers in 45 counties. Entergy Mississippi is a subsidiary of Entergy Corporation, a Fortune 500 electric company serving 3 million customers in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. 

Inducted into the Southern Public Relations Hall of Fame in September, Blanton has served as president of the Southern Public Relations Federation, the Public Relations Association of Mississippi, the Central Chapter of PRAM and the Mississippi School Public Relations Association. 

She became accredited in 2005 and was appointed by SPRF to serve on the Universal Accreditation Board. During her three-year term, she served as Chair of the Examination & Preparation Work Group for two years and as Chair of the Eligibility & Appeals/Policies & Procedures Work Group for one year. 

A Sustaining Member of the Junior League of Jackson, Blanton was selected for the League’s Leadership Institute in 2014 and selected by the Mississippi Economic Council for Leadership Mississippi in 2017. 

She holds a bachelor’s degree from Randolph College, formerly Randolph-Macon Woman’s College, in Lynchburg, Virginia, and a master’s degree from the University of Mississippi in Oxford.