Dan Forest was elected lieutenant governor of North Carolina in 2012 and became only the second Republican elected to the office since 1897. As lieutenant governor, Forest presides over the North Carolina Senate as President of the Senate. He is a voting member of the North Carolina Council of State, the North Carolina State Board of Education and the North Carolina State Board of Community Colleges. He is the chairman of the Governor’s eLearning Commission and a member of the State Board of Education’s Special Committee on Digital Learning. His passion is innovation through education, and he supports mastery based learning. Forest has helped create the North Carolina Education Endowment Fund to increase teacher compensation.