Meet Bryan O’Neill

Candidate for Transylvania County Commissioner

Home, Family and Community

Transylvania County is home.

My wife, Rachel, and I have been married for 50 years, and we care deeply about this community and its future. Rachel spent 36 years as a special education teacher and continues to help children learn to read as a tutor at Brevard Elementary School. Our son, Dylan, is a mechanical engineer.

For me, serving this community has never been about holding a title. It has been about getting involved, listening to people, solving problems and leaving things better than I found them.

A Career Built Around Solving Problems

Throughout my career, I have worked with Fortune 500 companies, smaller businesses and organizations of my own, serving in positions ranging from manager to President and CEO.

I hold an MBA and have led organizations with revenues of up to $110 million. My responsibilities have included financial management, operations, strategic planning, marketing, customer relationships, human resources and organizational leadership.

Much of my career involved stepping into challenging situations, identifying what wasn't working and helping organizations become stronger and more successful.

That experience taught me something I have carried into every leadership role since: difficult problems rarely improve by ignoring them. You have to understand the problem, bring the right people together, make decisions and follow through.

Service to Transylvania County

After making Transylvania County our home, I became increasingly involved in the community.

In Connestee Falls, I served as Chair of the Student Scholarship Program, helping support local students pursuing their education. I later served on the community's Strategic Planning Committee and Board of Directors.

I have also spent years mentoring entrepreneurs, small-business owners and nonprofit leaders through SCORE, drawing on my business experience to help others work through the challenges of starting, managing and growing an organization.

My community involvement has also included service with Pisgah Forest Rotary and on the boards of FWRD Transylvania, Transylvania Partners for Democracy and the local chapter of SCORE.

These experiences have allowed me to work with people from many different backgrounds who don't always agree on every issue. I've learned that productive leadership starts with listening, asking questions and focusing on the problem that needs to be solved.

Serving Our Schools

In 2023, I was appointed to the Transylvania County Board of Education, where I served through 2024.

One of the most important issues facing the Board was the long-delayed work needed at our aging school facilities following voter approval of the $68 million school bond referendum.

During my time on the Board, I worked with fellow board members and school leadership as the county moved toward issuing the school bonds and establishing a formal framework between the Board of Education and County Commission for managing the construction projects.

The experience gave me a much closer look at how decisions made by county government directly affect our schools, taxpayers and families—and how important communication, accountability and cooperation between local government bodies can be.

Why I'm Running

My years in business taught me how to manage organizations, budgets and difficult situations.

My years of community service taught me how much can be accomplished when people are willing to work together.

And my time on the Board of Education gave me firsthand experience with local government and some of the challenges facing Transylvania County.

Those experiences are why I decided to run for County Commissioner.

Our county faces important decisions about schools, infrastructure, economic opportunity, housing, county services and how we manage taxpayer dollars. Those issues affect all of us, regardless of political affiliation.

I believe county government works best when elected officials listen to the people they represent, deal openly with the challenges in front of them and focus on practical solutions.

That's what People – Not Politics means to me.

It's about families, not agendas.

It's about results, not rhetoric.

And it's about building a county government that works for the people it serves.