Andrew Fred Russ CPA/Senior Finance and Analytics Executive Andrew Fred Russ, CPA, is a Texas-based finance executive and business advisor who spent 25 years at a $50B+ consumer-facing company, rising from hourly store operations while he was still in school to Vice President of Planning & Analysis. Known to colleagues and clients as Andy, he is now a Partner at Ellacap, where he leads quality-of-earnings and financial diligence work for founder-led and family-owned businesses. Andy Fred Russ also serves as Principal of Russ CPA, his own Texas CPA firm.
Advising Founder-Led and Family-Owned Businesses At Ellacap, Andrew Fred Russ helps business owners through the process of buying and selling companies. Ellacap provides advisory, accounting, and investing services to founder-led and family-owned businesses with up to $100 million in enterprise value. Its work includes buy-side and sell-side advisory, accounting cleanup, fractional CFO support, and quality of earnings (QoE) reviews. Russ leads the firm's quality-of-earnings and financial diligence work, drawing on more than two decades of experience planning, forecasting, and analyzing the performance of a large, complex business. Through Russ CPA, Andy Fred Russ provides quality-of-earnings and transaction diligence services directly to clients. His areas of expertise include getting a business ready to sell,
building clean books and credible numbers that hold up in diligence, fractional CFO support, and item-level profitability, or knowing which products actually make money.
A 25-Year Corporate Career Andy Fred Russ's career began in store operations, where he held front-line roles through high school and college from 1996 to 2002. In 2001, he also completed an Assurance, IT, and Risk Consulting internship with Deloitte. After graduating, he moved into finance, holding progressive analyst and finance manager roles across multiple business divisions from 2002 to 2008. From 2008 to 2015, Russ served in Director and Senior Director roles in Planning & Analysis for Store Operations. He led finance and strategy for a major new-market expansion, and his responsibilities later grew to include financial infrastructure, annual planning, reporting, and multi-year roadmaps for operating divisions across Texas. From 2016 to 2023, Andrew Fred Russ served as Senior Director and Managing Director, leading Merchant Planning & Analytics. He was the senior financial and analytical partner to the merchandising organization and a regular advisor to the company's senior executive committee on financial performance, trends, and strategic planning. In 2024, he was named Vice President of Planning & Analysis, a role he held until 2026. As Vice President, Andy Fred Russ led a team of more than 100 professionals in finance, analytics, data science, and pricing. He ran the company's enterprise planning process, including the annual plan, the five-year plan,n and the weekly forecast, across U.S. and international operations for a company with 60 officers and more than 400 locations.
Building Teams and Systems Throughout his corporate career, Andrew Fred Russ built capabilities where none had existed. He created two company-wide teams from scratch, one focused on cost of goods and the other on decision science and data. Both became permanent parts of how the company runs. He also built the company's first item-level merchant profit and loss statement (P&L), giving buyers and store leaders one consistent view of their performance. The tool moved 100 buyers and 400 store leaders off offline spreadsheets. Russ served as principal strategist on a division turnaround that took the business from losses to strong profitability. He also delivered the analytics behind five company-wide price investments in two years, all funded by cost savings.
Developing People
For Andy Fred Russ, developing people is central to leadership. He built and ran a department-wide leadership development program that produced five director promotions, one senior director promotion and seven manager promotions in two years, while also improving team retention. He describes his leadership approach in three parts: developing people and building teams, bringing order to chaos, and democratizing intelligence, which he defines as getting the right insight to decision-makers at the moment it matters most.
Education and Credentials Andrew Fred Russ earned an MBA in Finance and Economics from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. He holds a BBA in Accounting and a BBA in Computer Information Systems, with Honors, from Texas State University, where he received the LBJ Outstanding Senior Award. He has been a licensed Certified Public Accountant in Texas since 2003.
Board Service and Community Andy Fred Russ has served on nonprofit and university boards throughout his career. He served on the Texas State University McCoy College of Business advisory board for 20 years and chaired it from 2021 to 2025. From 2018 to 2022, he chaired the Audit Committee of the Boy Scouts of America, Alamo Area Council, an organization with personal meaning for him as an Eagle Scout. Since 2022, he has served as a Trustee and member of the Finance & Executive Committee of the San Antonio Botanical Garden. Russ volunteers at his local church and has supported Oak Hills Church in San Antonio, as well as First Baptist Church and MDPC Church in Houston.
Beyond Work Raised in Austin, Andrew Fred Russ now lives in Alamo Heights, Texas. He is a husband, a girl dad, a son, and a dog dad to Dutch, an English Cream Golden Retriever. Outside of work, he usually runs, climbs mountains, skis, or plans the next trip. Andy Fred Russ has completed 14 marathons, including New York, Marine Corps, Houston, and Seattle, as well as Disney's Goofy Challenge, which pairs a half marathon one day with a full marathon the next. He has climbed several of Colorado's 14ers and counts Half Dome in Yosemite as his most memorable hike. He is also a skier, a cyclist, and a CrossFit regular. His travels have included Oktoberfest in Munich, skiing in the Swiss and French Alps, and summers with family in Chicago. A lifelong learner, Russ approaches each new race, summit, and destination with the same planning and curiosity he brings to his work.