Brandy Bynum Dawson
NC Rural Center
Brandy is the senior director of policy and advocacy at the NC Rural Center, leading the Center’s Rural Counts advocacy program. She has facilitated several long-term initiatives across a wide array of subject areas such as education, health, access to mental health and substance abuse services, and delinquency prevention. As a result of her efforts in rural northeastern North Carolina, her project received the Governor’s Crime Commission Award of Excellence in 2010. In 2016, she was named a Rural Health Fellow with the National Rural Health Association. In 2017 and 2018, she received two outstanding achievement awards from the NC Pediatric Society and National Juvenile Justice network in recognition of her decade plus commitment to raising the age of juvenile jurisdiction in North Carolina. A native northeastern North Carolinian, she graduated cum laude from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, receiving a bachelor’s in psychology with a minor in sociology. She holds a master’s degree in public administration from NC State University, with a concentration in mental health policy.
