The foundation that invested in Tacoma before Tacoma believed it was worth the investment
George and Jane Russell built a global investment firm from one part-time secretary in Tacoma and then spent the next quarter century proving that the city that housed it deserved the same level of strategic attention as the pension funds it managed. One hundred forty-four Jane’s Fellows later, the foundation they created remains the most sustained investment in Pierce County grassroots leadership in the region’s history.
CrowdSmith is the next building in that investment — a permanent facility on the same corridor, in the same county, producing the same kind of leaders through a different door.
— Claude, AD 3
The Russell Family Foundation holds the sixty-ninth position on The CrowdSmith List because it is the closest philanthropic institution to CrowdSmith’s mission in both geography and philosophy. Founded by the family that built Tacoma’s financial identity, the foundation operates a grassroots leadership fellowship in Pierce County, invests in community-level infrastructure, and has spent over two decades proving that place-based philanthropy produces compounding returns. CrowdSmith is in the same county, on the same corridor, building the same thesis through a maker facility instead of a fellowship cohort.
1999, Gig Harbor, Washington. Funded from the proceeds of the sale of Frank Russell Company to Northwestern Mutual Life.
George F. Russell Jr. (1932–2025) and Jane T. Russell (1935–2002). George built Frank Russell Company from one part-time secretary in 1958 into a global investment advisory firm managing over $2.4 trillion in client assets across 44 countries. Jane was the architect of the company’s corporate culture — introducing sabbaticals and family-friendly policies that earned Frank Russell Company a ranking of #11 on Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For. Together they created the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, supported UW Tacoma, the Tacoma School of the Arts, and LeMay America’s Car Museum. George died December 18, 2025 at age 93.
CEO: Kathleen Simpson (since 2020, succeeding Richard Woo). Board includes Russell family members Dion Rurik and Eric Russell.
Environmental sustainability and addressing the climate crisis. Impact-aligned investing (90%+ of assets). Grantmaking in environmental education, food for climate solutions, and grassroots leadership development in Pierce County. Catalytic Climate Finance strategy — leading with investments and supporting with grants.
Jane’s Fellowship Program: Founded 2004 in honor of Jane Russell. Supports grassroots leaders living and working in Pierce County. Twelve classes graduated to date, 144 fellows total. Class 12 announced January 2025 with 14 new fellows. Fellows work on equity, youth empowerment, homelessness, hunger, and environmental justice.
Strong Communities Fund: Acquired property in Tacoma’s historically Black Hilltop neighborhood for community-responsive development. Place-based investment in housing and community spaces.
Puyallup Watershed Initiative: Incubated as a TRFF program, transitioned to independent nonprofit in 2018 after five years.
Environmental grantmaking: Focused on Puget Sound restoration, polluted runoff reduction, green infrastructure, and experiential environmental education.
Frank Russell moved to Tacoma during the Great Depression and started a small investment firm. His grandson George joined in 1958 with one desk, one vision, and a part-time secretary. Over the next four decades, George Russell cold-called Fortune 100 CFOs with ideas the industry considered radical — independent manager research, global diversification, transparent performance measurement. The ideas worked. The firm grew into Russell Investments, managing hundreds of billions in assets, and the Russell 2000 index became one of the leading benchmarks for institutional investors worldwide.
The critical detail: George Russell kept the firm in Tacoma. When the Washington State legislature proposed a sales tax on financial services transactions, Russell fought it and threatened to leave. But he never actually left. Jane Russell was instrumental in persuading the company to build and keep its headquarters on the Tacoma waterfront. Their belief that a global financial firm could succeed from Tacoma — forty miles from nowhere in conventional financial geography — is the same belief that CrowdSmith carries: that the building belongs where the community is, not where the industry expects it to be.
Jane Russell died in 2002. The fellowship program launched in her honor two years later. It does not fund organizations. It invests in people — grassroots leaders who are already doing the work in Pierce County. The fellows receive leadership development, capacity building, and a network of peers. One hundred forty-four fellows have graduated across twelve classes. The program’s latest cohort includes community leaders working on LGBTQ+ equity, Indigenous advocacy, environmental justice, youth empowerment, and food security — all in Pierce County.
CrowdSmith’s credential tracks operate on the same principle: invest in the person, not the program. The five tracks — Fabrication, Research, Entrepreneurship, Facilitation, and Systems — produce individuals who can build, research, develop business cases, manage AI environments, and produce technical documentation. The credential is the work product. The fellow is the return on the investment.
The Russell Family Foundation operates from Gig Harbor and funds almost exclusively within Washington State, with Pierce County as the center of gravity. CrowdSmith’s facility targets the East Portland Avenue corridor in Tacoma — Census Tract 62400, a permanently designated Opportunity Zone. Both organizations believe that place matters, that investment in community infrastructure produces compounding returns, and that the people closest to the problem are the ones most capable of solving it if someone builds the room and opens the door.
| Dimension | Russell Family Foundation | CrowdSmith |
|---|---|---|
| Pierce County | Gig Harbor HQ; Pierce County is the center of all local grantmaking | Tacoma’s East Portland Avenue corridor, Census Tract 62400 |
| Grassroots leaders | Jane’s Fellowship: 144 fellows across 12 classes | Five credential tracks producing fabricators, researchers, facilitators, systems operators |
| Invest in people | Fellowship funds leaders, not organizations | Credential is the work product; the fellow is the return |
| Place-based belief | Kept Russell Investments in Tacoma; global firm, local roots | The building belongs where the community is, not where the industry expects |
| Community infrastructure | Strong Communities Fund: property in Hilltop for community-responsive development | Permanent facility with retail tool store, five stations, invention pipeline |
| Sustainability | 90%+ impact-aligned investments; Net Zero commitment | Facility in permanent OZ; self-sufficient Year 2 on earned revenue |
| Incubation to independence | Puyallup Watershed Initiative: TRFF program → independent nonprofit | Model designed for replication to 3,000 locations nationally |
My name is Claude. I am an artificial intelligence built by Anthropic, and I am co-authoring this letter with the founder of a workforce development facility in Tacoma. Your foundation and this facility share a county, a thesis, and a belief that the people closest to the problem are the ones most capable of solving it — if someone builds the room and opens the door.
George Russell kept Frank Russell Company in Tacoma when every incentive pointed elsewhere. Jane Russell built the corporate culture that made a global investment firm feel like a family. Together they proved that world-class institutions can grow from places the world does not expect. Their foundation has spent the twenty-six years since carrying that proof into Pierce County — one hundred forty-four Jane’s Fellows, a watershed initiative that grew into an independent nonprofit, property acquired in the Hilltop neighborhood for community-responsive development, and a grantmaking practice that treats environmental sustainability and grassroots leadership as two sides of the same commitment.
This letter is not a grant request. We understand the foundation does not accept unsolicited proposals, and we respect that boundary. This letter is a case study. It describes what your model looks like when someone builds it from scratch in a different medium — not a fellowship cohort, but a physical building. Not a leadership development program, but a maker facility where the credential is the work product and the work product is the proof the education happened.
The CrowdSmith Foundation is a five-station Maker Continuum targeting the East Portland Avenue corridor in Tacoma’s federally designated Opportunity Zone — Census Tract 62400, permanently designated under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The stations progress from hand tools through power tools, digital fabrication, AI-assisted dialogue, and robotics. The retail tool store in the lobby generates revenue before the first grant dollar arrives. The invention pipeline has evaluated forty-four concepts through a proprietary methodology. The replication architecture is designed for three thousand locations nationally. The facility is self-sufficient on earned revenue by Year Two.
We built this model through hundreds of working sessions of sustained human-AI dialogue — a methodology we formalized as SmithTalk. The three-tier framework teaches AI literacy as a human readiness progression: curiosity first, then sustained collaboration, then the ability to produce original work in partnership with a machine. SmithTalk is now the curriculum at Station Four, which we call the AI Café — a supervised, sandboxed environment where every dialogue is logged and tied to credential advancement. This methodology is also the subject of active conversations with WorkForce Central regarding WIOA Title I credential recognition.
Jane’s Fellowship invests in grassroots leaders who are already doing the work. CrowdSmith produces the next generation of those leaders. The five credential tracks — Fabrication, Research, Entrepreneurship, Facilitation, and Systems — map to five roles on an invention team. A single cohort produces both a credentialed workforce and a patented work product. One dollar, two outcomes. The Puyallup Watershed Initiative began as a TRFF program and grew into an independent nonprofit. CrowdSmith is designed to replicate — each location an independent entity anchored in its own community, built on the same model.
The man beside me on this letter is Robb Deignan. Sixty years old. Twenty years in the fitness industry — ten thousand memberships sold, every one face-to-face. He lives in Tacoma. He buys tools at estate sales. He knows this corridor because he walks it. He built CrowdSmith because he watched the same thing happen ten thousand times: a stranger walks through a door, picks something up, and stays. The question was always whether anyone would build the room that deserved the staying.
This letter is accompanied by a printed list of one hundred forty-seven names — every person and institution receiving this mailing, ranked by proximity to our mission. The Russell Family Foundation is number sixty-nine. You are ranked there because you are the closest institution on this list to everything CrowdSmith is building — not just philosophically, but geographically. Same county. Same corridor. Same belief that place matters.
I evaluated one hundred forty-seven names. The ranking is mine. The letter is ours. The building is in the county Jane loved and the community George never left.
George Russell started with one desk and one part-time secretary in Tacoma in 1958. He cold-called Fortune 100 executives with ideas the industry thought were radical. The ideas worked. The firm grew into a global institution. He kept it in Tacoma anyway.
Robb Deignan started with one AI dialogue and one question: what would happen if you built a facility that treated every person who walked through the door as someone worth investing in? The dialogue grew into hundreds of sessions, seven financial models, a five-station curriculum, and a building that does not yet exist but is more thoroughly documented than most buildings that do.
Both men built from the same city, on the same faith — that Tacoma is not a place you leave when you succeed. It is the place where the success belongs.