Peter Georgescu

Peter A. Georgescu is a Romanian-born American business executive, author, onetime political prisoner and the Chairman Emeritus of Young & Rubicam.

He emigrated to the United States in 1954 after a long and arduous series of events. Therein, he along with his elder brother Costa and grandfather were jailed by the Nicolae Ceaușescu regime. Meanwhile, his then away on business in New York City and suddenly exiled father, Valeriu C. Georgescu the immediately former manager of the Romanian Ploesti Oil fields under Standard Oil of New Jersey, was asked to spy for the Soviet Union and then in turn asked by the FBI to turn double agent. Peter was finally traded along with his brother for unnamed Soviet spies after his father having gone to the press at the advice of the U.S. Government obtained the intervention of Congresswoman Frances Payne Bolton of Ohio and President Dwight Eisenhower. Also in 1954, shortly following the boys release and safe arrival in the United States they appeared on the Today Show with Dave Garroway in an interview focusing on their ordeal and erstwhile adventure.

Peter Georghescu went on to attend Phillips Exeter Academy at the invitation of the headmaster and subsequently to earn his BA degree from Princeton University and his MBA from Stanford. He became chairman and CEO of Young & Rubicam in 1994 and served in those positions until 2000. As chairman he began to streamline the company's operations. In 1995, therein Y&R began an acquisition push increasing ownership in advertising agencies and public relations firms across Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America.

Georgescu is the author of "The Source of Success" and "The Constant Choice: An Everyday Journey From Evil Towards Good" and the co-author (with Alex Axelrod) of "Eisenhower on Leadership: Ike's Enduring Lessons in Total Victory Management". Goergescu was interviewed on "The Constant Choice: An Everyday Journey From Evil Towards Good" by Leonard Lopate on the Leonard Lopate Show on WNYC the NPR affiliate in New York City. He was elected to the American Advertising Federation Hall of Fame in 2011.

An opinion piece Georgescu penned in the Sunday Review section of the New York Times, on financial disparity, titled, "Capitalists, Arise: We Need to Deal with Income Inequality", in which he argues that monetarial 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 page. This piece informed the 2016 edition of the Gannon lecture which Georgescu delivered at Fordham University.