Donald Sternoff Beyer Jr. (; born June 20, 1950) is an American businessman, diplomat, and politician serving as the U.S. representative for since 2015. A member of the Democratic Party, his district is in the heart of Northern Virginia and includes Alexandria, Falls Church, and Arlington. Beyer has owned automobile dealerships in Virginia and has a long record of involvement in community and philanthropic work. From 1990 to 1998 he served as the 36th lieutenant governor of Virginia during the gubernatorial administrations of Doug Wilder (1990–1994) and George Allen (1994–1998). His party's nominee for governor of Virginia in 1997, he lost to Republican Jim Gilmore, who was then the Attorney General of Virginia. From 2009 to 2013, he served as United States Ambassador to Switzerland and Liechtenstein under President Barack Obama. In 2014, Beyer announced his candidacy for the U.S. House of Representatives seat for held by the retiring Jim Moran. Beyer won the 12-candidate Democratic primary in June with 45% of the vote and defeated Republican Micah Edmond, 63% to 33%, in the general election. Early life and education Beyer was born in the Free Territory of Trieste, the son of a U.S. Army officer, Donald Sternoff Beyer Sr., and his wife, Nancy McDonald. His grandmother Clara Mortenson Beyer was a pioneer in labor economics and workers' rights, and worked in the United States Department of Labor under Frances Perkins during the New Deal era. His grandfather Otto S. Beyer Jr. was Chairman of the National Mediation Board. The oldest of six children, he was raised in Washington, D.C., where his grandparents lived. In 1968, he graduated from Gonzaga College High School, where he was salutatorian of his class; in 1972 he graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Williams College, magna cum laude, in economics. Beyer was a Presidential Scholar in 1968 and a National Merit Scholarship winner. He graduated from a winter Outward Bound course at Dartmouth College in January 1971, and attended Wellesley College that year as part of the "12 College Exchange" program. In 2022, during his congressional career, Beyer enrolled at George Mason University in pursuit of a master's degree in artificial intelligence, taking one evening course per semester. He told The Washington Post in December 2022 that he was taking required undergraduate courses before he started graduate coursework, which he expected to begin by 2024. Business career After college, Beyer began working at the Volvo