From POW to CEO picks up Loet Velmans's story at the end of World War II, when, as a newly liberated prisoner of war, he returned from the Far East to Europe, and shortly thereafter set out for the United States, newly married and with no immediate job prospects. That changed when he was hired by John Hill, the founder of Hill & Knowlton, then America's largest and most influential PR firm. Hill, who saw something in this inexperienced young man that others in the firm did not, sent Velmans back to Europe a couple of years later to set up the firm's first overseas office. In telling the story of his worldwide peregrinations and his eventual rise to the position of Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Hill & Knowlton, Velmans shares his unique perspective on the "culture gap" between nations and the need for U.S. business to address that gap.

After surviving many narrow escapes during World War II and winding up a prisoner of war of the Japanese in Asia, Loet Velmans made his way from his native Holland to America with his young family. Starting as a young executive in the New York based public relations firm Hill & Knowlton, he was sent to Paris to establish a presence for the firm in Europe and eventually the rest of the world; in doing so he had to grapple with having to do business with his former Japanese captors. He was eventually called back to New York to become his firm's Chairman and CEO. Upon retiring, he turned to writing; his war memoir, Long Way Back to the River Kwai, was hailed as a valuable contribution to the history of the war in the Pacific. His wife, Edith Velmans, is the author of the acclaimed Edith's Story. They live by a lake in Sheffield, Massachusetts.