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In his first very leadership job Russ earned the lowest employee engagement scores of any manager in the national media company where he worked.
That experienced changed everything.
It happened when Russ was in his early 20's. It was deeply humbling. It made him realize that if he wanted to spend his life leading teams to achieve extraordinary results he had to change how he led people. The great results his team was achieving were a mirage. They covered up the reality that future results were at risk because of the way he was managing this team.
The changes Russ had to make didn't happen overnight. It took time. Russ and his teams went on to accomplish remarkable things at that media company over the next 15 years. He left as a Vice President having led one of the most remarkable turnaround stories in the company's history.
Russ began his career as a news reporter. He's covered everything from Presidential campaigns to the horrible tsunami that killed hundreds of thousands of people in Thailand and Indonesia. News reporting eventually led to an executive role with a national media company.
Russ left the corporate scene for a few years to experience the entrepreneurial world. There he was part of the team that helped a small business transition into a multi-state company that was highly sought after by private equity investors.
That's when Partners In Leadership recruited Russ to join their firm. They were seeing an explosive growth market as corporations started realizing the value of organizational culture. Russ decided to join the firm to help lead the expansion of its culture management training and consulting practice.
Since then Russ has sat through hundreds of meetings with the senior executives of companies from Walmart to Cigna to Kaiser Permanente to Lockheed Martin. He's leading multi-year culture management projects and coaching leaders in manufacturing, healthcare, aerospace, insurance, retail, and many other industries.
Russ regularly does keynote speaking engagements at conferences and corporate trainings to share what he's observing and learning.
His first book is scheduled to publish in 2018.
More importantly, Russ is the dad of two teenagers and two young boys as well as the husband of an amazing woman. He loves sunshine and dry air so he lives in Arizona. When he's not working you'll find him wake surfing, snowboarding, or sitting on a beach.
“My dad is kinda cool but not really.”
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