Maria Russo is a photographer, writer and editor whose work has been featured by Architectural Digest, People Magazine, Forbes, National Geographic, BBC America, The Huffington Post, AFAR, LensCulture, Sony Alpha, and VII Photo Agency among others. She is an ongoing contributor to National Geographic Your Shot and was a finalist in the Nature Conservancy Photo Contest 2023.

Russo has traveled the world over exploring societal/cultural relationships with the natural world and our human impact on the environment. It was through these experiences that she began partnering with brands to tell stories of CSR as it relates to community-led development, climate resilience initiatives and local economic development.

In 2014, Russo began documenting the lives of women farmers in Rwanda. Her photography examined how poverty and food insecurity are deeply tied to the climate and health crises. Russo spent the next seven years exploring women-led tree-based agriculture and permagardening climate resilience projects. She works in Consultative Status with the United Nations through her organization Humanity Unified Int’l. Russo continues to focus on these issues and why women are more vulnerable than men to the impacts of climate change.

During the early stages of her career, Russo worked in various areas of media and television at companies such as MTV Networks, People Magazine, Harper’s Bazaar, Warner Bros. and WOR News Talk Radio. She has worked with an expansive roster of brands including Allbirds, Plant People, Vittoria Coffee, Ford, Alila, The Four Seasons, Aman Resorts and AOL Lifestyle among others. Russo interviewed Janet Jackson, Walter Cronkite, Seth Meyers, Christie Brinkley, Sally Field, Martin Sheen, Adrian Grenier, Sharon Osborne, Angela Basset, Shannon Doherty and Glenn Close for People Magazine. She was also a contributing writer for Inc.com.

In 2016, Russo developed a graduate-level course in collaboration with Susanne Althoff, former editor-in-chief of the Boston Globe Magazine, for Emerson College. The course was titled: “Topics in Writing and Publishing: Writing and Editing for TheCultureist.com.”