He is also a Spencer Fellow at the Journalism School of Columbia University.
[3] He is the son of American jazz composer William Russo and his second wife, Jeremy Warburg.
His mother is a granddaughter of Vanity Fair publisher Conde Nast and German-American banker Felix Warburg.
He has two half sisters, Camille Blinstrub and Whitney Schildgen, and a full sister, Condée Nast Russo.
[4] Russo is the editor of the 2004 volume School Reform In Chicago[5] (Harvard Education Press) and the author of Stray Dogs, Saints, and Saviors (Jossey-Bass), a nonfiction account of the effort by Steve Barr and Green Dot Public Schools to revamp Locke High School, featured in the May 2009 New Yorker article "The Instigator".