Pete Peterson is Senior Chairman and Co-Founder of The Blackstone Group. He is Chairman Emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations and Chairman of the Council on Foreign Relation’s International Advisory Board. He is also founding Chairman of the Peterson Institute for International Economics (Washington, D.C.) and founding President of The Concord Coalition. Peterson was the Co-Chair of The Conference Board Commission on Public Trust and Private Enterprise. He was also Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York from 2000 to 2004.

Prior to founding Blackstone, Peterson was Chairman and CEO of Lehman Brothers (1973–1977) and later Chairman and CEO of Lehman Brothers, Kuhn, Loeb Inc. (1977–1984). He was Chairman and CEO of Bell and Howell Corporation from 1963 to 1971.

In 1971, President Richard Nixon named Mr. Peterson Assistant to the President for International Economic Affairs. He was named Secretary of Commerce by President Nixon in 1972. At that time he also assumed the Chairmanship of President Nixon’s National Commission on Productivity and was appointed U.S. Chairman of the U.S.–Soviet Commercial Commission, which negotiated comprehensive trade, Ex-Im credit, arbitration, copyright, and lend-lease agreements.

Peterson was formerly a Director of Sony, Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company, Federated Department Stores, Black & Decker Manufacturing, General Foods, RCA, The Continental Group, Cities Service, and the Public Agenda Foundation. Mr. Peterson is a director of The India Fund, Inc. and The Asia Tigers Fund, Inc. and has served on a number of other corporate boards. He is a Trustee of the Committee for Economic Development, the Japan Society and the Museum of Modern Art, and a Director of the National Bureau of Economic Research and The Nixon Center. Peterson is the author of several books, including Running On Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It; Gray Dawn: How the Coming Age Wave Will Transform America and the World; Will America Grow Up Before It Grows Old?; and Facing Up: How to Rescue the Economy from Crushing Debt and Restore the American Dream.

He has been awarded honorary PhD degrees by Colgate University, Georgetown University, George Washington University, Northwestern University, New School University, the University of Nebraska, the University of Rochester, and Southampton College of Long Island University. In 2007, he launched the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, with the aim of increasing public awareness of the nature and urgency of several key challenges threatening America’s future, including large and growing budget deficits, low national and personal savings rates, and a ballooning national debt that endangers the viability of Social Security, Medicare, and the U.S. economy itself.