Bold student aims high for success as athlete, entrepreneur

Almost every culture has a saying similar to “Fortune favors the bold,” usually referring to a male warrior. Purdue University Fort Wayne student Emilia Russell may become the female embodiment of perseverance, as no obstacle slows her from pushing ahead until she achieves her goals. She never allows her own trepidation or insecurities to get in the way.

Russell grew up in South Cave, a small Yorkshire village near England’s North Sea. As a track and field athlete who ranked No. 12 in England in the heptathlon, Russell wanted to push herself by attending college in the United States, where the sport has greater emphasis. She studied biochemistry in Connecticut for two years before transferring to PFW for her final two seasons. Now a senior, she’s studying business economics and competing in the javelin.

“I’ve always been a person who wants to do something different than everyone else,” Russell said. “Everyone else was going to school in England, but I was like, `I want to go to America.’ I always told myself that I’d do something scary and put myself in a new environment, so I transferred and ended up in Indiana.”

“Doing something scary” should be on the front of Russell’s sweatshirt as she continually challenges herself. For example, she had a summer internship lined up last year … before she attended the Mastodon Internship and Career Fair last spring and found a job with Northwestern Mutual.

“Being able to coach and mentor Emilia has been an absolute blessing,” said Bobby Blum, the college unit director of Northwestern Mutual’s Fort Wayne office. “Her positive personality is contagious and brings out the best in others around her. Her energy, work ethic, attention to detail, and her overall grit to embrace challenges within our program were impressive to witness. She broke many barriers, created her own networking group to create positive engagement within the community, focusing on empowering women in business, and her overall initiative stood out the most to me. She also completed the most initial meetings and received the most referrals than any other college representative in the state of Indiana.”

Russell parlayed that into a visit to the New York City office, where she charmed them and now has a full-time offer after commencement in May—except she’s also considering staying at PFW to work on her master’s degree. She has options, including what to focus her studies on.

No matter what happens in Russell’s life, she’s always trying new things, head down and plowing forward.

“I like to do at least one scary thing a day,” she said. “I used to be so scared of rejection because people say, `No,’ all the time, so I tried to put myself every day in situations where I can get rejected so I can increase my rejection therapy. By doing that, I’m able to take the power away from the rejection and instead use it as motivation.”

That’s how she started pushing herself to attend Fort Wayne networking events, especially those focused on empowering women. She’s usually the youngest person in a room full of established female business owners in their 30s and 40s. She says she was scared the first few times, but it got easier.

Eventually, she was going to so many that Russell decided to host one of her own. She recently welcomed 20 women to a charity wine tasting to benefit breast cancer research.

“The thing about Emilia is how driven she is, which is money coming out of my mouth,” said Elva Resendez, a clinical assistant professor in management. “It’s so good to see younger people with that drive for success and not for this love of money, but for the love of making an impact.”

Russell would like to host more events, aiming to create a networking platform for thousands of women, possibly in New York. The goal would be to make it easier for people to meet by pushing them slightly outside of their comfort zones … because that is scary, and Russell replaces that fear with empowerment.

She’s also very busy at PFW. Along with her studies and track and field, Russell is a residential assistant and a member of the school’s Challenge Cup team in the annual Federal Reserve Board competition. Despite being an international student, Russell has mastered the plan.

“Emilia set her mind to studying and prepping for the question-and-answer portion of the Fed Challenge Competition, and she became my go-to person for tying the topic of the question to the Federal Reserve's dual mandate,” said Heather Tierney, associate professor of economics. “That’s not at all easy to do since it requires a great deal of extrapolation. Her ability to focus and her desire to learn make her absolutely brilliant.”

With anyone else, that glowing referral might be daunting to live up to. Russell just laughs and says, “Bring it on!”