Peter Andrew Georgescu (born March 9, 1939 in

Bucharest Bucharest ( , ; ro, București ) is the capital and largest city of Romania, as well as its cultural, industrial, and financial centre. It is located in the southeast of the country, on the banks of the Dâmbovița River, less than north of ...

) is a

Romanian-American Romanian Americans are Americans who have Romanian ancestry. According to the 2017 American Community Survey, 478,278 Americans indicated Romanian as their first or second ancestry, however other sources provide higher estimates, which are most ...

business executive, author, and the Chairman Emeritus of

Young & Rubicam VMLY&R is an American marketing and Marketing communications, communications company specializing in advertising, Digital media, digital and social media, sales promotion, direct marketing and brand identity consulting, formed from the merger of ...

Early life and education

Peter's father, Valeriu C. Georgescu was the manager of the Romanian Ploesti Oil fields under

Standard Oil of New Jersey ExxonMobil, an American multinational oil and gas corporation presently based out of Texas, has had one of the longest histories of any company in its industry. A direct descendant of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil, the company traces its roo ...

, Due to this position Valeriu had been asked to spy for the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

and then asked by the

FBI The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic Intelligence agency, intelligence and Security agency, security service of the United States and its principal Federal law enforcement in the United States, federal law enforcement age ...

to turn

double agent In the field of counterintelligence, a double agent is an employee of a secret intelligence service for one country, whose primary purpose is to spy on a target organization of another country, but who is now spying on their own country's organi ...

. Georgescu has claimed that, at one point he, his elder brother, Constantin and grandfather were jailed by the new Soviet satellite regime. Concurrently his father, then away on business in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

, decided to stay in the United States. In 1954 Peter was allowed to leave Romania after his father, having gone to the press at the advice of the U.S. Government, obtained the intervention of Congresswoman

Frances Payne Bolton Frances Payne Bolton (née Bingham; March 29, 1885 – March 9, 1977) was a Republican politician from Ohio. She served in the United States House of Representatives. She was the first woman elected to Congress from Ohio. In the late 1930s Bolton ...

of Ohio and

President Dwight Eisenhower Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower (born David Dwight Eisenhower; ; October 14, 1890 – March 28, 1969) was an American military officer and statesman who served as the 34th president of the United States from 1953 to 1961. During World War II, ...

. Peter later claimed he was traded along with his brother for unnamed Soviet spies. Also in 1954, shortly following the boys' release and safe arrival in the United States, they appeared on the ''

Today Show ''Today'' (also called ''The Today Show'' or informally, ''NBC News Today'') is an American news and talk morning television show that airs weekdays from 7:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. on NBC. The program debuted on January 14, 1952. It w ...

'' with

Dave Garroway David Cunningham Garroway (July 13, 1913 – July 21, 1982) was an American television personality. He was the founding host and anchor of NBC's ''Today'' from 1952 to 1961. His easygoing and relaxing style belied a lifelong battle with depressi ...

in an interview. Peter Georgescu went on to attend

Phillips Exeter Academy (not for oneself) la, Finis Origine Pendet (The End Depends Upon the Beginning) gr, Χάριτι Θεοῦ (By the Grace of God) , location = 20 Main Street , city = Exeter, New Hampshire , zipcode ...

at the invitation of the headmaster and subsequently to earn his BA degree from

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...

and his MBA from

Stanford Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is considere ...

Business career and writing

Georgescu became chairman and CEO of

in 1994 and served in those positions until 2000. As chairman he began to streamline the company's operations. In 1995 Y&R began an acquisition push increasing ownership in advertising agencies and

public relations Public relations (PR) is the practice of managing and disseminating information from an individual or an organization (such as a business, government agency, or a nonprofit organization) to the public in order to influence their perception. P ...

firms across

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...

Asia Asia (, ) is one of the world's most notable geographical regions, which is either considered a continent in its own right or a subcontinent of Eurasia, which shares the continental landmass of Afro-Eurasia with Africa. Asia covers an area ...

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...

, and

Latin America Latin America or * french: Amérique Latine, link=no * ht, Amerik Latin, link=no * pt, América Latina, link=no, name=a, sometimes referred to as LatAm is a large cultural region in the Americas where Romance languages — languages derived f ...

. Georgescu is the author of the books ''The Constant Choice: An Everyday Journey From Evil Towards Good'' and ''The Source of Success'' and he wrote the foreword for "Eisenhower on Leadership: Ike's Enduring Lessons in Total Victory Management". He was interviewed on ''The Constant Choice'' by

Leonard Lopate Leonard Lopate (born September 23, 1940) is an American radio personality. He is the host of the radio talk show ''Leonard Lopate at Large'', broadcast on WBAI, and the former host of the public radio talk show ''The Leonard Lopate Show'', broad ...

on the ''Leonard Lopate Show'' on

WNYC WNYC is the trademark and a set of call letters shared by WNYC (AM) and WNYC-FM, a pair of nonprofit, noncommercial, public radio stations located in New York City. WNYC is owned by New York Public Radio (NYPR), a nonprofit organization that di ...

, the

NPR National Public Radio (NPR, stylized in all lowercase) is an American privately and state funded nonprofit media organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It differs from other ...

affiliate in

. He was elected to the

American Advertising Federation Hall of Fame The Advertising Hall of Fame, operated by the American Advertising Federation (AAF), began in 1948 as a result of a proposal by the New York Ad Club and its president, Andrew Haire, to the Advertising Federation of America, the predecessor organiza ...

in 2011. An opinion piece Georgescu penned in the Sunday Review section of ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

,'' on financial disparity, titled, "Capitalists, Arise: We Need to Deal with

Income Inequality There are wide varieties of economic inequality, most notably income inequality measured using the distribution of income (the amount of money people are paid) and wealth inequality measured using the distribution of wealth (the amount of we ...

", in which he argues that monetary disparity in the U.S. has to be addressed as the situation otherwise would lead to unbearable taxes or social tempest, engendered over one thousand comments on the newspaper's

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin M ...

page. Georgescu has sat on the Board of Trustees of

NewYork–Presbyterian Hospital The NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital is a nonprofit academic medical center in New York City affiliated with two Ivy League medical schools, Cornell University and Columbia University. The hospital comprises seven distinct campuses located in the New Y ...

since 1996. Georgescu received the Golden Plate Award of the American

Academy of Achievement The American Academy of Achievement, colloquially known as the Academy of Achievement, is a non-profit educational organization that recognizes some of the highest achieving individuals in diverse fields and gives them the opportunity to meet o ...

in 1997. Georgescu endorsed Democratic candidate

Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton ( Rodham; born October 26, 1947) is an American politician, diplomat, and former lawyer who served as the 67th United States Secretary of State for President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2013, as a United States sen ...

in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.Mandelbaum, R.
More Business Leaders Sign On With Clinton
''Forbes'', September 23, 2016.

References

External links

Official website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Georgescu, Peter 1939 births Living people American advertising executives Romanian emigrants to the United States 20th-century American businesspeople 21st-century American businesspeople Businesspeople from Bucharest