Phil Russell

Phil Russell is a retired United States Marine Corps Reserves Colonel. He served 30 years on active and reserve duty with the Marine Corps and 15 years with U.S. Government agencies including serving as a congressional senior staff member for Former Senator Fred Thompson and Former U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. He also served in the Office of the Secretary of Defense’s Drug Enforcement Policy and the Department of Veterans Affairs’ Office of Congressional Affairs.

He is experienced in developing budgets, communications planning, government relations, drafting policy language for authorization, and appropriation bills.  Phil possesses extensive involvement in crisis management while assigned to sensitive billets at the Pentagon and U.S. Department of State. In postings to Kandahar, Afghanistan and Baghdad, Iraq, he was assigned to the Political-Military Section. During his time in Afghanistan, he was involved in Village Stability Operations, Governance, and Economic/Social Development. In addition to other public sector concerns, he served with the Special Inspector General Office for Afghanistan Reconstruction whereby he coordinated the congressionally mandated quarterly reports on Afghanistan’s progress towards representative government. He has traveled extensively throughout Europe and parts of the Middle East in these roles as well.

Most recently, he has provided government relations services on AI and has been involved with volunteer work with an NGO in Ukraine.

He is a graduate of David Lipscomb College and Defense Intelligence College.