Andrew Fred Russ (andrew-fred-russ)

A Certified Public Accountant licensed in Texas since 2003, Andrew Fred Russ holds an MBA in Finance and Economics from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and two undergraduate degrees from Texas State University. Andy, as he is known, built a 25-year career at a $50B+ consumer-facing company, starting in hourly store operations as a student and advancing to Vice President of Planning & Analysis. The Texas-based finance executive and business advisor is now a Partner at Ellacap, leading its quality-of-earnings and financial diligence work for founder-led and family-owned businesses. He also leads Russ CPA, his own Texas CPA firm, as its Principal.

At Texas State University, Andrew Fred Russ earned a BBA in Accounting and a BBA in Computer Information Systems, with Honors. The university recognized him with the LBJ Outstanding Senior Award. He later completed his graduate business education at Chicago Booth.

As a Partner at Ellacap, Andy Fred Russ helps owners buy and sell companies and leads quality-of-earnings and financial diligence. Ellacap works with founder-led and family-owned businesses with enterprise values of up to $100 million, providing advisory, accounting, and investing services. Those services span accounting cleanup, buy-side and sell-side advisory, quality of earnings (QoE) reviews, and fractional CFO support. In this work, Russ draws on more than two decades of planning, forecasting, and performance analysis within a large, complex business.

As Principal of Russ CPA, he provides quality-of-earnings and transaction diligence services directly to clients. His expertise includes preparing a company for sale, keeping books clean and numbers credible enough to withstand diligence, fractional CFO support, item-level profitability, and the discipline to know which products actually make money.

Russ was Vice President of Planning & Analysis from 2024 to 2026, the final role in his 25-year corporate career. He led more than 100 professionals across finance, analytics, data science, and pricing. He led the enterprise planning process, including the annual plan, the five-year plan, and the weekly forecast, spanning U.S. and international operations at a company with 60 offices and more than 400 locations.

Before that, from 2016 to 2023, Andrew Fred Russ was Head of Merchant Planning & Analytics, a position in which he held Senior Director and Managing Director titles. He served as the senior financial and analytical partner to merchandising and regularly advised the senior executive committee on financial performance, trends, and strategic planning.

From 2008 to 2015, he held Director and Senior Director roles in Planning & Analysis for Store Operations. There, he led finance and strategy for a major new-market expansion. Over time, he also took on financial infrastructure, annual planning, reporting, and multi-year roadmaps for operating divisions across Texas.

His finance career began in 2002. Through 2008, Andy Fred Russ advanced through analyst and finance manager roles in multiple business divisions. Earlier, from 1996 to 2002, he worked front-line store operations jobs during high school and college, and in 2001 he completed an internship in Assurance, IT and Risk Consulting with Deloitte.

Russ built two company-wide teams from scratch. One focuses on cost of goods and the other on decision science and data, and both became permanent parts of the company's operations.

He also developed the company's first item-level merchant profit and loss statement (P&L). By giving buyers and store leaders one consistent view of performance, it moved 100 buyers and 400 store leaders off offline spreadsheets.