Biography

Call 1.800.966.1380 to contact Peter Roussel booking agent, publicist, manager, pr firm, representative and management company if you would like to hire Peter Roussel for a speaker appearance, autograph signing, endorsement deal or corporate event. Here you can find speaker fees, booking fees, costs, availability and schedule information. With over 35 years of business, governmental, political, public affairs and media experience, including two tours of duty in the White House under Presidents Reagan and Ford, Peter Roussel now serves as Executive Vice President of Neumann Roussel Public Relations in Houston, Texas.

The firm produced the orientation video, handled media relations and helped produce the dedication day event for the George Bush Presidential Library.

As Communications Director for the Houston Economic Summit Host Committee, he supervised media relations in conjunction with the 1990 Economic Summit of Industrialized Nations, the first time ever that event had been hosted in a major American city.

As a spokesman for President Reagan, Roussel had previously attended the Economic Summits at Versailles, 1982, Williamsburg, 1983, Bonn, 1985, and Tokyo, 1986, and helped plan the U.S. media participation at those events.

From 1981-83, Peter Roussel served in the White House as Deputy Press Secretary to the President, and from 1983-87 as Special Assistant to the President and Deputy Press Secretary. His duties in that position included briefings of the White House press corps and accompanying President Reagan on domestic and foreign trips, including summit meetings with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev at Geneva in 1985 and Iceland in 1986.

His very first assignment upon entering the Reagan White House in 1981 was to handle media relations for the landmark historic appointment of Sandra Day O'Connor as Justice to the Supreme Court.

Peter Roussel's career in Washington began in 1969 when he was named press secretary to U.S. Congressman George Bush. In 1970, Roussel returned to Texas to serve as campaign press secretary to Mr. Bush in his U.S. Senate race. It was then that he also met George W. Bush and worked with him in that campaign. Upon Mr. Bush's confirmation as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations in 1971, Roussel was appointed his personal press officer and served there during a two-year period that included a number of headline-making events, including admission of the People's Republic of China. When Mr. Bush was appointed Chairman of the Republican National Committee in 1973, Roussel returned to Washington and served as his personal press officer there.

In 1974, Peter Roussel assumed his first assignment at the White House when he was named Staff Assistant to President Ford. He served there as assistant to subsequent Chiefs of Staff -- Don Rumsfeld and Richard Cheney. Early in 1976, Roussel transferred to the President Ford Committee as special assistant to that campaign's national director, James A. Baker, III. In 1978, after returning to Houston, Roussel served as communications director of Jim Baker's campaign for Attorney General of Texas.

Peter Roussel has served as an on-camera television commentator for the ABC affiliate stations in Houston (KTRK-TV) and Boston (WCVB-TV), offering analysis on government and political affairs. He was host/co-producer of "A Conversation with George Bush: 41st President of the United States", for KUHT-TV, a program they distributed to the Public Broadcasting System. He has written articles which have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post and other newspapers. He has written and directed documentary films, including the first place national award winner, "A Shooting in Town", which was placed in worldwide distribution by the United States Information Agency.

Peter Roussel graduated in 1965 from the University of Houston, which honored him in 1983 as a Distinguished Alumnus. In 1986 he received the first Distinguished Communications Alumnus Award presented by that university. From 1989-91 he was a visiting lecturer at Texas A&M University on the subject of the press and the presidency.