The Virtual Citizen’s founder, Bryan Dawson, is the son of an immigrant father and a wounded Hungarian Freedom Fighter and refugee mother. He is a first-generation American born and raised in Miami, Florida. His father immigrated from Manchester, England and his mother from Budapest, Hungary. She was wounded fighting for freedom in 1956 against the Soviet-installed communist regime. He learned early that freedom isn’t free and that democracy and human rights are taken and earned, not given.

Bryan had an unconventional childhood. Speaking Hungarian at home, he learned English in nursery school. His parents worked in show business and toured the United States with their show: The “ZsuZsa and the Don’t Stop, Go! Review!” His father, Freddie, was a renowned musician and band leader while his mother was the vivacious frontwoman leading a group of dancers and performers. They cut an album and mom would go on to be interviewed by Larry King. Given their travel, Bryan spent a great deal of time with his grandparents in Toronto, Canada where he took his first baby steps. Both artists as well, his parents would eventually settle down and open an art gallery and art school in North Miami Beach. The gallery and art school fell on hard times creating tremendous stress that would eventually tear the family apart.

Bryan lost his father when he was 11 years old. His mother struggled to make ends meet, her struggle made more difficult after Reagan took away his father’s death survivor benefits. Then came cancer. Her insurance company dropped her. She had hid it all, knowing they’d go bankrupt if she got treatment. Being sick and self-employed in the pre-Obamacare days was often a death sentence. No one would insure her. By the time she was eligible for Medicare, it was too late. The brave Freedom Fighter lost this battle.

He is grateful that his upbringing, despite the many challenges, exposed him to a rich diversity from his parents’ artist community as well as from his working class, ethnically, linguistically, and racially-diverse neighborhood. Bryan began his entrepreneurial career contributing to household expenses at age 12, selling door to door and starting a successful picture framing, lawn service, and car wash businesses with his best friend. It was these challenges and friendships and his mother’s revolutionary experiences that led to his love for diversity and helped form his fighting character.

Excelling at voice and theatre, his talents would eventually earn him a scholarship to the University of Miami School of Music. He would eventually change majors, join the Air Force ROTC where he commanded the Color Guard and had a chance to sing the national anthem at the Orange Bowl. He transferred to Florida International University where he was elected to Student Government and studied International Affairs with a special interest in Soviet Studies. A work-study job at the University’s Office of Media Relations gave him his first taste of public affairs. He came to Washington D.C. for graduate school at The George Washington University where he specialized in Central and East European Government and Politics, and International Business, and National Security Policy. It was here where his activism was born.

In June, 1989, he organized student groups in support of the Tiananmen Square protests in Beijing. It what would become as [the Washington March for Chinese Democracy], thousands of students converged on the Chinese embassy in Washington, D.C. He and his fellow protesters spent three nights in the tiny square in front of the embassy and built a replica of the Goddess of Democracy statue that was built by the students at Tiananmen. Bryan recalls the horror of recording a telephone call with Beijing as the sounds of machine gun fire echoed through the neighborhood in the background. The Chinese renamed their massacre of peaceful student democracy protestors as “the June 4th incident” – Bryan’s mother’s birthday.

That same year, he was invited to teach English and U.S. Constitutional history at the renowned [Budapest Corvinus University] (then known as the Karl Marx University of Economics). He was witness to the transition away from the communist system. He visited with the burgeoning opposition parties and joined a jazz-rock group, performing to thousands. He recalls practicing his arrangements of Cole Porter and George Benson in the local communist meeting house under a red star and the watchful eye of Karl Marx. Bryan literally followed his mother’s footsteps taking part in mass demonstrations against the regime. As government helicopters flew above and marching crowds echoed their forefathers of 1956 chanting “Ruszkik Haza! (Russians go home) he was reminded of this mother’s stories of how she and her compatriots would paint the undersides of porcelain dinner plates with black shoe polish and placing them in the streets of Budapest. To Russian tank crews, these omunious dinner plates looked like land mines. When the crew opened the hatch, young Hungarian Freedom fighters would appear out of hiding to offer a Molotov Cocktail. Down the hatch as they say. Exactly 43 years later, as he arrived with his group of protestors to Kossuth Square in front of the Hungarian Parliament, he found the stunning building adorned with a massive banner that read “Függetlenség, Szabadság” (independence, freedom). Soon, a free democratic republic was proclaimed. He wasn’t done.

He went to East Berlin, crossed the border at Checkpoint Charlie, and took a pick-axe to the Berlin Wall. He’ll never forget the pain in his hands after hitting the reinforced concrete in the bitter cold. He read the epitaphs of so many who were killed trying to reach freedom. The wall fell as did the brutal East German regime a few months later. He heard students had organized protests in Prague where police had recently beaten protestors and arrested Vaclav Havel, dissident writer and future President. They chose Nov. 17, the 50-year anniversary of the killings of Prague students by invading Nazi troops. He took the night train and joined the crowds of the Velvet Revolution as they marched toward Prague Castle. He heard the radio as officials declared the communist party had ceded control and that the military would not fire on its own people. A roar erupted. Tens of thousands of people held hands forming a 10-mile long snake as they slowly moved down the hill, across the Charles Bridge, and emptying into Wenceslaus Square. Still holding hands and many in tears, they would all hop in unison, shouting with the joy of freedom. As he left Hungary, landing in Vienna on a connection, the pilot announced that the brutal Rumanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu was executed after a revolution started by the Hungarians in Transylvania, the land of Bryan’s great grandmother.

On his return to grad school, he taught English and computer skills at a vocational school where questionable business practices led him to establish his own nonprofit English school. He later won an opportunity to develop a Website for the Office of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization (OSADBU) at the Pentagon. He loved the work as it combined his creative skills and love of technology. He was now on an unexpected 30-year career in Information Technology where he would work in multiple sectors and industries.

He founded Webenetics in 2020, a technical and management consulting and web application development company with a diverse portfolio of clients from the Smithsonian and the World Bank to telecom giants and the US Department of Defense. He led the tiger team to design and establish and then manage the US DOJ’s Litigation Technology Service Center (LTSC) and would later lead Microsoft Business Operations for Dell Technologies’ Extreme Scale Infrastructure division focusing on infrastructure and solutions for custom, hyperscale cloud computing and storage, including Modular Data Centers, managing a global team and a P&L of over $1 billion. For the last 20 years, Bryan developed curricula and delivered capacity-building training to West African government civil service and Unions in a variety of subjects including Project Management and Leadership, Communication, and Information Security. These one and two-week-long seminars took him across the globe to cities that include Washington, D.C., Toronto, London, Istanbul, Dubai, and Saigon.

He was an early contributor to a pioneer in digital advocacy, Phone2Action. After his return to Washington from Dell in Austin, Texas, he rejoined Phone2Action / Capital Canary as Head of Partnerships. He exited prior to its merger with Quorum and joined forces with Phone2Action’s co-founder to establish BuildWithin, a technology and services company bringing the apprentice model to tech and tech-adjacent roles. His passion for people, technology, practical innovation, and the issues and deep knowledge of the advocacy technology space (and its critical gaps) led him back to public affairs and developing The Virtual Citizen’s innovative ecosystem.

He love for music and performing continues. He was a Cantor for the Diocese of Arlington for 20 years. He says the highlight of his musical career was performing at the Apollo in New York City where the elation of a standing ovation was trumped only by touching the same petrified log that his idol Ella Fitzgerald also touched for good luck. Later, he would form a band with talented musicians from the Hungarian and other embassies in Washington performing his originals. The lead guitar player, who was from the Republic of Georgia, shared stories about how he had to escape to the mountains to listen to American rock and blues music, forbidden in the then Soviet satellite, and taught himself to play. The bonds formed over shared experience run deep. Playing with soul takes on new meanings. The music becomes magical.

His experiences have given Bryan a deep empathy for others. He has a burning desire to help others and a love for history, learning, and teaching. Bryan speaks Spanish and Hungarian fluently, and even a little Jamaican Patois. His wife is from Mexico and they have two children, one of whom is in her senior year studying Anthropology: Disasters, Displacement and Human Rights. Bryan instilled a love for music in his children who both performed with the Washington Performing Arts Children of the Gospel Choir at prestigious venues including the Kennedy Center. His daughter studied ballet at the Kirov Academy and recently performed in dramatic roles on stage and often lends her voice in English and Spanish to advocacy campaign voice messages.

Bryan founded The Virtual Citizen because organizations deserve more than just a transactional relationship. To be a true advocate you must have empathy. To know how to frame an issue to move the policy needle, you must care about the issues and have a genuine interest to learn. To deliver the best solutions, you must have a love for technology and know how to translate business needs. A “Technocultural Integrator” was born.

[Book a meeting] to see how The Virtual Citizen can help you!