Bill Russo
Bill Russo has worked as Communications Director for former Vice President, and now President of the USA, Joe Biden. He was a key part of Biden’s electoral campaign in 2020 and graduated from Sussex with an Environment Development and Policy MA in 2010.
The diversity of my class - of nationality, ethnicity, ideology and experience - vastly exceeded my expectations” Bill Russo
As a child I had plenty of dream professions — lawyer, architect, Doctor — but politics and policy was never something that crossed my mind. As I grew older I only knew that I wanted to find a career that would allow me to help other people. That much was instilled in me by my parents, an obligation to use the opportunities that I had been given to aid those less fortunate. It wasn’t until my first few months of college at the University of Delaware that I began to find a passion for politics and public policy and a belief that I could make a positive contribution working in that field. By the time I was ready to graduate, I knew I wanted to pursue further education that combined my specific interests in international development and environmental sustainability. One of my professors at the time insisted that there were only a few schools that would be able to combine those two fields and offer me a world class degree, and Sussex was at the top of the list.
The diversity of my class — of nationality, ethnicity, ideology, and experience — vastly exceeded my expectations. It was one of the first times in my life I could be in a full room of people and be the only American. My classmates were inspiring and with the guidance of our excellent instructors, doors were opened to pursue new interests. I had arrived with a general sense of what I wanted to focus on for my dissertation, and by the end had decided to go in an entirely different direction. I was able to uncover new passions and then follow them because Sussex offered a classroom experience that was built around collaboration and exploration.
The end of my time at Sussex was a bit difficult. I went back to the US during summer term to spend some time with my father, who passed away from cancer a week after I returned. The university was wonderful and gave me some extra time to complete my thesis, but I was not able to return to the UK as planned. The summer after graduation, I applied for an internship at the White House on the recommendation of a friend who worked in Washington, DC. I was accepted for that fall and began working in the office of then-Vice President Joe Biden. That internship turned into a full time job, and I spent the next few years working for Vice President Biden, on President Obama’s National Security Council, and at the US Department of State.
At the end of the Obama-Biden Administration, I spent a few months helping start up the University of Pennsylvania Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement. Since September 2017, I have gone back to working directly for Vice President Biden as his spokesperson and communications director. In that period of time he has written a book, made numerous trips abroad, and begun campaigning for our 2018 elections. If you had told me the day I left Sussex that this is how the next eight years of my life would play out, I wouldn’t have believed you. I’ve been incredibly fortunate to find work that I believe in and that I really think matters and I’m grateful to those I met during my time at Sussex for helping me get there.