WORK
Russell is committed to building and expanding community-based and equity-driven environmental solutions around the world, bringing diverse work experience from six continents and across the private, public, and philanthropic sectors.
Virunga National Park
Conservation Program Manager May 2023 – Present
Russell currently works at Virunga National Park, the oldest and most biodiverse national park in Africa located in war-torn Eastern Congo. He champions community-beneficial conservation programming that delivers conflict reduction, economic development, and critical conservation outcomes for the Park’s 44 endangered and 300+ endemic species. His work there began in 2019 when he wrote his thesis on the history of mountain gorilla conservation utilizing archival research from Belgium and ethnographic research from Rwanda and the DRC, receiving Highest Honors and the award for Harvard's best African Studies thesis. He returned to Virunga in 2023 to help rectify the Park’s colonial history through community-driven conservation in its second century.
Glass Half Full
Board of Advisers July 2023 – Present
Glass Half Full is a grassroots recycling company providing otherwise absent recycling services throughout the Gulf Coast. A portion of the glass it receives is milled back into sand — the second-most exploited natural resource in the world — and utilized for coastal restoration projects with local and Indigenous communities in coastal Louisiana, which loses a football field of land every 100 minutes. Russell supports with creative direction, expansion strategy, and the development of subsidiary recycled glassware studio Alchemy. Russell's grandparents grew up in the bayou, and much of his family history can be found on this fast-eroding land. This inspired his masters dissertation at Cambridge, in which he argued that "the first American climate refugees" were not displaced by climate change, but by colonization.
Sway Innovation Co.
Founding Member; Head of Sustainability & Impact June 2020 – May 2023
Russell is a founding member and "employee one" of Sway, where he helped bring a seaweed-based plastic replacement from concept to market. As Head of Sustainability & Impact, he developed an expansive stakeholder network across the value chain, from seaweed farmers to major corporate brands to industrial composters to policymakers. Sway has won major grants from the TOM FORD Plastic Innovation Prize, the Beyond the Bag Challenge (Walmart, Target, CVS), and the National Science Foundation. To ensure the regenerative impact of seaweed farms in frontline fishing communities, Russell continues to promote the development of an Indigenous-led seaweed industry in Caribbean Colombia, where he helped receive the government's first permits and planted its first seaweed farms in 2022.
ADVISING & CONSULTING
Russell is a sought-after adviser supporting private, public, and grassroots organizations with environmental strategy, equity initiatives, and intergenerational collaboration. If you are interested in working with Russell, send him an email.