Career
Throughout the late 80"s and early 90"s he was a successful karate competitor, winning several national karate tournaments for a period of 4 years, he was the #1 ranked sparring competitor in the region. In February 2007 he was inducted into the Midwest Martial Arts Hall of Fame with Bridgett Riley and Patrick Riley. He was awarded his 5th degree blackbelt by Grand Master Rich Osborn.
Post Fight Russian retired in 1998 when he graduated from Southern Illinois University with a Bachelors degree in Management Information Systems.
With a focus on building a successful business and academic career he completed a Masters in Business Administration from the University of Phoenix (Street Louis, Missouri) in 2003. In 2015, he earned the doctor of philosophy (Doctor of Philosophy) in Organizational Psychology from Walden University (Minneapolis, Minnesota).
His academic research has focused on leadership and building successful virtual teams. He has also had a successful career working for the largest Information Technology organizations in the world (International Business Machines Corporation, Microsoft and VMware) with a focus on enabling technologies that support the virtual workforce.
