Their story starts in suburban Detroit, where Seretha Russell, 56, was a stay-at-home mother who raised David and his younger sister, Janae, a psychology student at TCU, to value education and lifelong learning.
“There were no breaks in our household,” she said. “Summers. Christmases. I always gave them work to do.”
After graduating from high school at the top of his class in 2008, David Russell followed the advice of a maternal aunt who lives in Fort Worth and became a Horned Frog. He thrived at the Neeley School of Business, where he majored in accounting and finance.
“The connectivity of TCU is something that was a surprise to me,” he said. “You go to school to get an education, but what I never realized was what the relationships would mean to me in my career.”
After a stint at JPMorgan Chase, David Russell now serves as managing director and head of family office services at MGO, a private wealth management firm based in Southern California. He splits his time between a home in downtown Los Angeles and a place in Dallas.
Since August 2020, he has also served as an adjunct professor at TCU.
Following a divorce, Seretha Russell had also moved to North Texas, where she managed the jewelry department at the now-shuttered Belk in the Dallas Galleria mall.