Russell is the Executive Director of Enrollment and Campus Planning at Denver Public Schools, where he leads the school choice process, long-range forecasting and enrollment analysis, facility utilization, shared campuses, and real estate. He has held leadership roles in and around K-12 school systems across the country. He taught elementary, middle, and high school in both urban and rural areas; was a school administrator, a teacher coach, and a baseball coach; worked in various research labs studying school turnaround, Algebra instruction, and educational neuroscience; and consulted to evaluate and improve school discipline policies and practices. At Houston Endowment, Russell served as the Education Program Officer and also built the Learning and Evaluation department, strengthening organizational impact by managing strategy development, evaluating evidence of progress toward goals, and cultivating learning habits to improve decision making.

Russell holds a Bachelor of Science in psychology from Texas A&M University and a Master of Public Policy in K-12 education policy from Vanderbilt University. On the weekends you can find him in the mountains with his wife Carrie, their 3 young daughters, and a poorly-trained poodle.