About

Digital denizen, rabid creative, a channel originator, Russell bridges brand and digital strategy with creative execution to evolve sustainable customer connections. Currently VP Digital Branding at Gigante Vaz Partners Advertising in New York, he built and spearheads the agency’s Internet practice. Whether pure strategy, sophisticated design, or complex technical implementation, Russell brings insight, intelligence, and hands-on expertise to a wide range of online and cross-channel marketing projects.

Formerly Senior Brand Strategy Consultant for IBM Global Services, Russell’s clients have included Disney, Universal, Revlon, Lucent, Newell Rubbermaid, Worktopia, Athentidate, Key Bank, Travelers, Samsung, Ricoh, Toshiba, Marlboro Group International, Donna Karan, St. Martin’s Press, and Dow Jones. Russell has organized creative teams for several firms, including at Multimedia Solutions, where he brought creative benchmarking, mentoring, and process efficiency to a design team that had grown inside a technology company.

In 1995, Russell co-founded Entertainment Drive, an early category leader in online marketing for the major motion picture studios and television networks. Among many accolades, the company was featured on the cover of PC Magazine, honored with one of the first Webby awards, and recognized for significant achievement in new media technology by the Smithsonian Institution. The first company authorized to digitize Disney animation for online distribution, they also produced many of the first celebrity chats and movie sites.

After attending Parsons School of Design and then majoring in film and video production at Northwestern and New York Universities, Russell wrote, produced and directed several award-winning broadcast and corporate television programs before becoming Marketing Director for a multimedia corporate training firm.

Russell lives in the Dumbo neighborhood of Brooklyn, and became an avid amateur local historian after learning through Internet research that Walt Whitman had written extensively about his family’s 1840’s enterprise, The Brooklyn Brass Band.