Dan Besse

Daniel "Dan" Vaughn Besse was born in Hickory, North Carolina. He earned a Political Science degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1977 and a law degree from UNC School of Law in 1980. For nearly a decade, he worked as a legal aid attorney for low-income families in coastal North Carolina. He later moved to Winston-Salem and served on the City Council from 2001 to 2020. He has also taught classes on government and environmental law at several colleges, including N.C. State University and Winston-Salem State University. He was elected to the Forsyth County Board of Commissioners in November 2022, and his current term ends in 2026.