Russ began his career over 30 years ago at the Xerox Corporation, where he held numerous positions from sales to Executive Manager of Branch Operations. During his 13-year tenure, he had extensive experience managing sales and management development training organizations.
Russ then joined the Triad Corporation as Corporate Director of Customer Service. Over a five-year period, he rebuilt the customer service function into a profit making entity with new revenue producing sources.
With multi-national corporate experience under his belt, Russ embarked on entrepreneurial efforts focused on building successful entities from the ground up. His first entrepreneurial effort was with Age Wave Incorporated where he sold consulting and marketing services to CEO’s at Fortune 100 corporations, such as American Express, RJR Nabisco and Chrysler.
Simultaneously, Russ built a successful business-to-business telemarketing company serving Fortune 500 accounts. He later took this company public where it listed on the NASDAQ exchange.
For over nine years, Russ was an equity partner and the executive vice president of sales and marketing of a national energy management company where he negotiated agreements with major U.S. utilities and large corporations during a period of deregulation and uncertainty in the U.S. power industry. Russ has performed numerous speaking engagements and has facilitated thousands of days of training and development to sales people and middle and executive level managers.
Russ received both his Industrial Engineering and Marketing degrees at the University of Dayton and has taught courses at the Rochester Institute of Technology. He has served on Boards of Directors in both the public and private sector.