John M. Florescu
John Florescu has had a career as media entrepreneur, television producer and businessman with experience in the United States and Europe. A journalist by training and foreign policy generalist, Florescu is the son of one of an American Balkan scholar, Radu Florescu, and the grandson of a Romanian pre-war diplomat. He is chief executive officer of Centrade, a family-owned media company based in Houston.
Florescu was previously Chief Executive Officer of David Paradine Television, Sir David Frost's U.S. Los Angeles based television company. Florescu has produced around 140 specials, documentaries and InterViews for PBS, HBO, A&E, History Channel, Discovery - Times, Disney Channel, CBS Cable and other broadcast outlets in the United States and other countries. He was Co-Executive Producer of Talking with David Frost, one of the longest running news and public affairs interview program in PBS history. Through these productions, Florescu has served as co-executive producer for interviews with every past U.S. President (except Barack Obama) since Richard Nixon and also with several foreign heads of state including Mikhail Gorbachev, Margaret Thatcher and several Middle Eastern leaders. In a joint venture with US New & World Reports and The New York Times, Florescu produced The Next President with David Frost in 1988.
Prior to joining David Frost, Florescu served as Director of Communication for the Democratic National Committee (DNC). He also worked in the presidential campaigns of Edward Kennedy and played a fund raising role in the presidential campaigns of John Kerry and Barack Obama where, with his brother, he ran "Romanian-Americans for Obama".
From 1982 to 1985, Florescu was Vice President of Boston-based APB. In this capacity, Florescu created and served as Executive Producer of the PBS series Great Confrontations at the Oxford Union, a 4-part public affairs debate series that brought together the world's best student debaters with world statesmen.
From 1980 to 1982, Florescu ran VPI where he pioneered the use of cable television for political commercials. He also served as an adviser to Congressional House Democrats on political use of new technologies, a subject on which Florescu has lectured on at Harvard, Stanford and Yale Universities. From 1977 to 1979, he was an AP writer based in Paris, France. There following, he served as a metro writer for The Boston Globe before joining the Kennedy campaign.
Having lived in and out of Romania for seven years, Florescu is involved with the management of media companies, set up with his brothers immediately after the fall of Nicolae Ceausescu. He has advised Senator Edward Kennedy on Romanian political affairs as well as many US and Western businesses entering the European market. He has written editorials AbOUT Romania for leading U.S. newspapers, participated in academic symposium on Romanian topics; advised on studies by the Council on Foreign Relations; served in 1991 as a U.S. delegate with NDI during the first democratic elections and produced documentaries on Romania for, among others, Fox News and The History Channel. Centrade has also assisted the State Department during the 1997 visit of President Bill Clinton to Romania.
Florescu holds a B.A. in History from Boston College. From 1974 to 1975, he studied Politics, Philosophy and Economics (P.P.E.) at Oxford University (Campion Hall), where he served as the first American editor of the university newspaper, The Cherwell. Florescu is married and has two sons.