Russ’s background is in medicine. He qualified as a doctor in 1989, at the University of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne in the UK. He emigrated to Australia in 1991, and set up practice as a GP in Melbourne.

As a GP he became increasingly interested in the psychological aspects of health and wellbeing (and increasingly disenchanted with writing prescriptions). Ultimately this interest led to a total career change, and he now works in two different, yet complementary roles: as a therapist and as a life coach.

Over the years, he has trained in many types of therapy and coaching, but when he discovered Acceptance & Commitment Therapy, (ACT), a unique and creative mindfulness-based behavioural therapy, he was so deeply impressed that he immediately went to the USA to train with its creators, Steve Hayes, Kelly Wilson, and Kirk Strosahl. Since then, he has been back many times, and is now an internationally renowned ACT trainer. His ACT-based self-help book is a bestseller, now published in over twenty-two countries and seventeen different languages.

Since 2005, Russ has travelled all around Australia, and internationally, providing workshops and training for a wide variety of health professionals, from coaches and counsellors, to psychologists and psychiatrists. His highly-acclaimed ACT workshops are typically brief, powerful, cost-effective and life-enhancing. Participants regularly report not only major improvements in their therapy and/or coaching, but also in their personal lives – and evaluation forms frequently praise his ability to make complex ideas seem very simple.