Owners of founder-led and family-owned businesses who are preparing to buy or sell can work with Andrew Fred Russ, CPA, on quality of earnings and financial diligence. As a Partner at Ellacap, Russ leads that work. He brings to it a 25-year corporate career at a $50B+ consumer-facing company, where he advanced from hourly store operations, a job he held while still in school, to Vice President of Planning & Analysis. Most people call him Andy. He is based in Texas and works as a finance executive and business advisor.

Ellacap serves founder-led and family-owned companies valued at up to $100 million in enterprise value, offering advisory, accounting, and investing services. The firm handles buy-side and sell-side advisory, cleans up accounting, provides fractional CFO support,t and performs quality of earnings (QoE) reviews. Within Ellacap, Andy Fred Russ heads the quality of earnings and financial diligence work, guiding owners through the purchase or sale of a company. He brings more than twenty years of experience planning, forecasting, and analyzing results in a large, complex organization.

He also runs Russ CPA, a Texas CPA firm he owns and leads as Principal. Through that firm, Andrew Fred Russ offers quality-of-earnings and transaction diligence services directly to clients. He concentrates on preparing businesses for a sale, producing clean books and credible numbers able to withstand diligence, supporting companies as a fractional CFO, and item-level profitability, meaning a clear understanding of which products actually earn money.

Russ started in front-line store operations roles, working through high school and college between 1996 and 2002. While in school, he added a 2001 internship in Assurance, IT and Risk Consulting at Deloitte. After graduating, he shifted to finance and took on progressively larger analyst and finance manager roles across several business divisions between 2002 and 2008.

Between 2008 and 2015, he held Director and Senior Director positions in Planning & Analysis for Store Operations. Andy Fred Russ directed finance and strategy for a major expansion into a new market, and over time his portfolio expanded to include financial infrastructure, annual planning, reporting, and multi-year roadmaps for operating divisions throughout Texas.

In his next chapter, from 2016 through 2023, he served in Senior Director and Managing Director roles as Head of Merchant Planning & Analytics. In those roles, Russ served as the merchandising organization's senior financial and analytical partner, and the senior executive committee regularly relied on his advice on financial performance, trends, and strategic planning.

Andrew Fred Russ became Vice President of Planning & Analysis in 2024 and served in the position through 2026. He oversaw more than 100 professionals working across finance, analytics, data science, and pricing. The company's enterprise planning process, covering the annual plan, five-year plan, and weekly forecast for both U.S. and international operations, ran under his leadership at an organization with 60 officers and more than 400 locations.

Several of Russ's contributions at the company involved starting from nothing. He built two company-wide teams from the ground up, one dedicated to cost of goods and the other to decision science and data. Each became a lasting part of the company's operations.

He also created the company's first item-level merchant profit and loss statement (P&L). It gave buyers and store leaders a single, consistent view of performance, and it moved 100 buyers and 400 store leaders away from offline spreadsheets.

When one division needed a turnaround, Andy Fred Russ served as its principal strategist, and the business moved from losses to strong profitability. In a separate effort, he produced the analytics supporting five company-wide price investments over two years, each paid for through cost savings.

Russ considers developing people central to leading. A department-wide leadership development program he built and led yielded five director promotions, one senior director promotion, and seven manager promotions within two years, and team retention improved over the same period.

He sums up his leadership in three ideas. First, developing people and building teams. The second is bringing order to chaos. The third is democratizing intelligence, his term for delivering the right insight to decision makers at the moment it matters most.

Andrew Fred Russ completed an MBA in Finance and Economics at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. At Texas State University, he earned two degrees with Honors, a BBA in Accounting and a BBA in Computer Information Systems, and was honored with the LBJ Outstanding Senior Award. He earned his Texas CPA license in 2003.

Boards at nonprofits and universities have been part of his life throughout his career. For 20 years, Russ sat on the advisory board of the Texas State University McCoy College of Business, chairing it from 2021 to 2025. An Eagle Scout, Andy Fred Russ chaired the Audit Committee of the Boy Scouts of America, Alamo Area Council, from 2018 to 2022, work closely tied to his scouting background. He has been a Trustee of the San Antonio Botanical Garden and a member of its Finance & Executive Committee since 2022.

He also volunteers at his local church. His support has extended to Oak Hills Church in San Antonio and to First Baptist Church and MDPC Church in Houston.

Andrew Fred Russ grew up in Austin and lives in Alamo Heights, Texas. Husband, son, and girl dad, he is also a dog dad to Dutch, his English Cream Golden Retriever.

When he is not working, Russ tends to burn out, hit the mountains, ski, or map out his next trip. He has run 14 marathons, including New York, Marine Corps, Houston, and Seattle. He has also finished Disney's Goofy Challenge, a half marathon followed by a full marathon the next day. Several of Colorado's 14ers are behind him, though Half Dome in Yosemite remains the hike he remembers most. Skiing, cycling, and regular CrossFit round out his routine.

His travels have taken him to Oktoberfest in Munich and onto the slopes of the Swiss and French Alps, and his summers include time with family in Chicago. Andy Fred Russ is a lifelong learner who plans each race, climb, and trip with the curiosity he applies to his advisory work.