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David M. Petrou Is a nationally recognized accredited communications executive with more than thirty years of experience in providing leading global brands like Black & Decker; British Airways; the government of Canada; Sprint PCS; Special Olympics International; Starwood Hotels & Resorts; The Pharmaceutical Research & Manufacturers Association; Time-Warner; US Airways and Walt Disney Pictures with senior strategic counsel including government and public affairs; brand building and reputation management; crisis and litigation communications; as well as investor and consumer media relations. Petrou is also a well-known figure for his work on four feature film productions, including “The Exorcist” and the first two “Superman” movies.
BACKGROUND
Petrou was born in Washington, D.C. and raised in the Maryland suburbs of Montgomery County, Maryland, where his late mother Bebe Petrou was the first chair of the County Human Relations Commission and his father, John Petrou was one of the founders in 1967 and principal officers and stockholders of the Psychiatric Institutes of America, one of the forerunners of treatment of mental and emotional disorders through psycho-pharmaceutical drug therapies in partnership with psychoanalysis and at one time, the largest chain of private mental health care facilities in the nation. Petrou is a graduate of Georgetown University, with an Honors Master’s Degree in English and Literature. While pursuing his post-graduate education, Petrou became a “gopher” for Academy Award-winning film director William Friedkin, who was shooting exterior shots on campus for the bestselling thriller, “The Exorcist,” a job that would directly lead to Petrou’s later career in feature film production.
CAREER
Petrou began his professional career on Capitol Hill, working for both a United States senator and a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. He then moved to New York, where he became Associate Director of Public Relations at the paperback division of Random House. Following three years in the publishing industry, Petrou began an eight year career in motion picture production and development, working first for The Salkind Organization, where he was part of the senior production team on both “Superman” films, shot on location around the world and at Pinewood Studios outside London. Following nearly three years of principal photography on those first two box office smash hits, Petrou went to work for the distributor, Warner Bros. at the studio in Los Angeles, where he was an executive consultant in production and marketing.
After nearly a decade in London and Hollywood, Petrou returned to Washington where he first served as a director for the late Ambassador R. Sargent Shriver II and the late Eunice Kennedy Shriver at The Joseph P. Kennedy Foundation and later, as a contributing editor covering Washington’s burgeoning arts and performance scene for the capital’s leading monthly business magazine, “Regardie’s” before founding his government and public affairs firm in 1986. Petrou sold his interest in his award-winning firm in 2005, continuing as a public affairs and Democratic political strategist, working for fourteen months on the presidential campaign of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. In May, 2012, Petrou began work on his third book—his first novel—based on a true story. He is also the author of two prior works of non-fiction about film making, Crossed Swords, about film production behind the Iron Curtain in Budapest, Hungary and the best-selling The Making of Superman, published by Warner Books.
ACTIVITIES
Since his return to Washington in the early 1980’s, David Petrou has become a leading figure in the arts and non-profit development, serving on the boards and advisory councils of The Choral Arts Society of Washington; chairman of the American Film Institute’s “Second Decade Council;” The City Choir of Washington; founding advisor to the Clarice Smith Center for the Performing Arts at the University of Maryland and the Washington Men’s Camerata Advisory Board. In 2006, Kenned Center for the Performing Arts President Michael Kaiser personally appointed Petrou to the Kennedy Center Community Advisory Board, a position he holds today along with a seat on the Board of the Foundation for Contemporary Mental Health, chaired my renowned Washington psychiatrist, Dr. Howard Hoffman. He is also a baritone in the city’s premier symphonic chorus, The Choral Arts Society of Washington.
PROFESSIONAL HONORS & AWARDS
Over the course of his film and communications consulting career, Petrou has been the recipient of numerous awards and professional recognitions, including Silver Anvil nominations; numerousThoth Awards ( the Washington region’s local awards given out by the Public Relations Society of American, the industry’s top trade association ) and dozens of speaking awards and citations as a leading government, public affairs and communications professional. He is listed in both The Motion Picture Almanac and Who’s Who in American Business.