Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy was born and raised in Scranton, Pennsylvania, whose anthracite coal deposits helped build the American industrial economy. As soon as he could, Governor Dunleavy finished school and headed north to Alaska, beginning his journey working in a southeast logging camp in 1983. From one corner of the state, Governor Dunleavy moved north by northwest, literally. There, in the Northwest Arctic for 20 years, Governor Dunleavy taught in some of the most rural schools in North America, as a teacher, a principal, and a superintendent.
It was in the Arctic that Governor Dunleavy met and married his wife and Alaska’s First Lady Rose, an Iñupiaq from the Kobuk River Valley village of Noorvik. Together they raised their three daughters, Maggie, Catherine, and Ceil, in both rural and eventually urban Alaska. All three of the Dunleavy daughters work in Alaska’s resource development industries.
In 2004, the Dunleavy family moved to the Mat-Su Valley. It was there that Governor Dunleavy began his public service on the Mat-Su School Board, including two years as the board president.
Governor Dunleavy was elected to the Alaska State Senate in 2012 and served until January 2018. In December 2018, Mike Dunleavy was sworn in as the 12th Governor of Alaska and this past November became the first Republican Governor to win a second term since Jay Hammond in 1978.
