Nason W. Russ

Nason Russ was born on February 4, 1957, the second child of Dr. Ellier Russ (a Podiatrist practicing in the historic district of Bordentown) and Frances Russ (a teacher of the deaf who became the office manager for her husband’s medical practice).  Nason went through the Bordentown school system – Clara Barton Elementary, William MacFarland, Bordentown Regional High School – graduating in 1974.  During his time a BRHS, Nason was an honor student, in the Aerospace club, and known for his sense of humor, drumming, and love of 1950’s Doo Wop music.  Nason attended Rutgers University from 1974 to 1978, graduating with a BA in Psychology.

After college, Nason moved to Baltimore, MD to take graduate classes in Clinical Psychology at Towson State College (now Towson University).  In addition to taking evening classes, Nason began his career in Psychology by volunteering at a battered women’s shelter in 

Baltimore city, and working the night shift doing intake and then counseling psychiatric patients at the U.S. Public Health Service hospital in the Wyman Park section of Baltimore.  During this period, he also worked as an analytical chemist at a contract chemistry lab in Baltimore.

Needing a break from academics, Nason took a full-time job at the Francis Scott Key Medical Center (now part of Johns Hopkins University) in the Behavior Pharmacology Research Unit studying how drugs affect behavior. As a Medical Research Assistant, Nason collected, analyzed, and presented data at conferences on the pharmacological and behavioral effects of cigarettes, methadone, and caffeine.

In 1982, Nason was accepted into the Clinical Psychology program at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, VA.  During his clinical training, Nason worked as a mental health counselor, performed initial screenings and evaluations of psychiatric in-patients, led group psychotherapy sessions, and developed a memory retraining program for brain damaged patients at the VA Medical Center in Roanoke, VA.  From 1986- 1987, he did his clinical internship at the Medical University of South Carolina & VA Medical Center.  He found his passion in research, however, and authored/co-authored 11 publications in respected scientific journals on studies related to preventing drunk driving.  He received his Master of Science Degree from Virginia Tech in 1984 and his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology in 1987.  His Doctoral Dissertation, Evaluation of a Server Intervention Program for Preventing Drunk Driving, was awarded Dissertation of the Year in Social Psychology, and a shortened version was published in the prestigious American Journal of Public Health in 1987.

After graduate school, Nason took a three-month hiatus in Israel at a Hebrew language immersion program in Netanya, Israel with the aim of learning to speak Hebrew.  At the school, Nason met and fell in love with Maud van Bergen, a fellow student at the school who hailed from Holland, The Netherlands.  Maud soon joined Nason in the US, first living in Bensalem, PA, and then their current residence in Holland, PA.  They have been married for over 30 years.  So, in addition to learning to speak (passable) Hebrew, he ended up learning Dutch as well.

Nason was able to combine his degree in Psychology and his interest in research into a career as a Marketing Research Consultant. In this capacity, Nason has held titles of Executive Director, Vice President/Senior Vice President, Account Executive, Client Strategist, Senior Consultant, and Senior Manager.  His work involved conducting and managing both qualitative and quantitative research studies on a broad range of pharmaceutical and medical device products.  In addition, he consulted on strategic endeavors for the financial services, consumer, industrial, and legal industries.  His clients have included Pfizer, Novartis, Bristol Myers, Johnson & Johnson, Bayer, Comcast, and Merrill Lynch, as well as a number of smaller start-up companies such as Biogen, Eisai, UCB, and Gilead.  Over his career, he conducted hundreds of focus groups and thousands of in-depth interviews with physicians, allied medical personnel, patients, business executives, managed care payers, and consumers and employees across a multitude of industries. Areas of research include understanding new and existing markets, new product design, product positioning, competitive intelligence, concept testing, customer satisfaction, product launch planning and post-launch tracking.  His work has taken him all across the USA, and internationally to the UK, Italy, Spain, France, Germany, Mexico, Greece, Turkey, Switzerland, Poland, and Russia.