Chris Banescu

Wednesday

Nov182009

Biography

Chris Banescu is an attorney, entrepreneurial businessman, and university professor. His business ethics and management articles, podcasts and personal blog can be found on ChrisBanescu.com. He is a regular contributor to OrthodoxyToday.org, manages the conservative Christian site OrthodoxNet.com and the OrthodoxNet Blog. He regularly writes articles and commentaries, and has given talks and conducted seminars on a variety of business, ethics, management, and religious topics. He has also written book reviews for Townhall.com and articles for Acton.org.

Chris earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration and Marketing from New York University and a Juris Doctor degree from Southwestern University School of Law.

Chris’s experience spans over 21 years pertaining to business, legal, management, entrepreneurial, e-commerce, information systems development, and IT leadership and management. It includes management and senior executive positions at Fortune 500 corporations, small and medium-sized companies, traditional and online universities, and various entrepreneurial ventures and Internet startups. He also built and currently manages NewhallStation.com a successful international e-commerce business.

For the last nine years, Chris has been teaching a variety of courses on business, law, ethics, management, leadership, marketing, and information technology at multiple universities in their graduate and undergraduate programs. Currently, he is an adjunct professor at Woodbury University in California and facilitates online graduate business courses for University of Maryland University College and Capella University. Chris has also conducted seminars and given lectures on a variety of business and information technology topics for other universities, including Pasadena City College and California State University, Northridge.

Chris is passionate about his Orthodox Christian faith and the eternal truths it proclaims. As a descendant of four generations of Orthodox priests, he grew up immersed in the rich liturgical and religious traditions of Orthodoxy. From an early age, his grandfather, Fr. Basil, took on the role of his father and became both a spiritual guide and a trusted mentor that shaped his character. Growing up close to his grandfather and great-grandfather, both devout Orthodox priests, blessed his childhood with an invaluable introduction and immersion into the Orthodox Faith, both inside and outside the altar.

He further deepened and strengthened his understanding and passion for the faith while helping guide and support his wife’s own journey from Mormonism into the Orthodox Faith. That journey lasted more than 5 years and culminated in his wife’s baptism into the Orthodox Church; just two years before they were married at St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary, in upstate New York. That miraculous journey also emboldened him to defend Orthodoxy and proclaim Christ and His Gospel with renewed strength, conviction, and determination.

Chris is also an advocate for freedom, democracy, and capitalism, and a staunch defender of individual freedom, the sanctity of life, and human dignity. He is an immigrant to the United States, having escaped the communist tyranny in Romania. He has seen first-hand the horrors and depravity of a society ruled by terror, falsehood, and repression. He has experienced the unimaginable evil, suffering, and sheer chaos that results when God is removed from the governing precepts of a country and life is controlled by gangs of ruthless and hypocritical demagogues. He has seen how leftist and communist ideologies can terrorize millions of innocent men, women, and children, and how its atheistic and corrupt principles can enslave and destroy the human spirit. That is why Chris has vowed to defend the island of freedom, especially religious freedom, that still exists in this corner of the world, and do anything he can to preserve this great miracle called the United States. This is one way for him to give thanks to the country that rescued both him and his family from the clutches of oppression and guaranteed enslavement that communism offered.

While serving as a full-time faculty member at Azusa Pacific University in California, Chris had the opportunity to lecture on multiple religious issues and actively use faith-integration techniques in his classes, especially several senior ethics seminars. The feedback and responses he received from many young adults opened his eyes to the tremendous need for passionate leadership, truthful perspectives, and thoughtful reflections on our daily lives. He understood the tremendous need for a proper Christian critique and response to the many social, cultural, scientific, and moral issues we face every day. Most of all, he was shocked to see how secularization had entered and softened even a very large, and staunchly Christian academic institution.

Teaching and lecturing are Chris’ greatest passions. He looks at every lecture and seminar as an opportunity to engage, enlighten, motivate, and challenge people to think critically, reflect deeply, use their faith and ethics as the proper filters for their actions, nurture both spiritual and personal excellence, use common sense, draw on their passion, and strive to make a difference in their families, communities, and organizations. He calls on everyone to act as shining lights of Christian truths and love within their individual spheres of influence. The world needs faithful, talented, ethical, motivated, and passionate Christians to be the “salt of the earth” and lead by example; showing forth the true meaning of Christ’s teaching. Actions do indeed speak louder than words!

Chris is available to speak on various topics including those below. He can also develop additional topics for lectures, seminars, and retreats by request.

Topics

Orthodox Christian Topics:

Your Work Matters to God
Practical Christianity from C.S. Lewis to Today
Christian Reflections on Contemporary Issues (Stem Cell Research, Global warming, Evolution, Government, Family, Education, Cultural War, Sanctity of Life)