Peter "Pete" L. Peterson was born in Wichita, Sedgwick County, and raised in Newton, Harvey County, Kansas. He earned both his bachelors in economics and political science (1968) and his JD (1971) from the University of Kansas. As an undergraduate, he was selected for Phi Beta Kappa and initiated into the Phi Delta Theta fraternity, from which he received the Arthur R. Priest Award in 1967, the fraternity's highest national honor for an undergraduate member. During law school he was selected into the academic honor society Order of the Coif and served as the Kansas Law Review editor-in-chief from 1970-1971.

Peterson briefly worked in Los Angeles, California after graduation with the firm Latham and Watkins. In 1973 he returned to Kansas, joining Clark, Mize, and Linville, Chartered in Salina. He has continued to work with that firm, focusing on trusts and estate planning, with a smaller amount of work in labor law.

Peterson has been active in the Salina community, co-founding the Greater Salina Community Foundation in 1999 and receiving the City of Salina's Citizen of the Year Award in 2010. He was elected as a Fellow of the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel in 1995 and won the Kansas Health Foundation's Leader-Full Community Award in 2004.

[Information retrieved from narrator biographical form with collection materials.]