Max T Russell

Max T. Russell has lived most of his life with one foot in the Spanish-speaking world. He has worked alongside migrants, processing green beans during harvest time in Michigan. He also eats green beans. He has collected information from Latinos in and out of the U.S. for more than 30 years. They have told him their secrets and their stories of coming to America. The funny thing is that he often collects this information in the midst of a crowd of monolingual Americans. Immigrants assume that Americans born into an English-speaking home can't understand another language. And they're almost always right!

Having a long history of gathering this information enables Russell to tell business owners how to construct precise messages that connect with the Latino community, especially Latinos who come from other countries.

Russell writes an international column for TDWI (The Data Warehousing Institute), showing IT departments around the world how to market "business solutions" to the companies they're a part of. Writing for IT is like dealing with foreign language problems, and everybody in the business world has "why I hate IT" stories. That makes the columns easier to write.

Russell has specializations in feature story writing, interviewing, direct-response marketing, educational media, and human learning and memory.

His extended family has lots of languages and quite a few Hispanics. Russell and his wife have been married for 33 years and have three children, who enjoy being around people of other cultures and nationalities. They all seem to like green bean casserole when their mother bakes it.