Russell has a B.S. in chemical engineering and an A.B. in international relations from Stanford University. She earned a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from California Institute of Technology in 1995. She was a postdoctoral investigator at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). From 1997 to 2003, Russell was on the faculty at Princeton University; she unsuccessfully sued the trustees of Princeton for sex discrimination after her 2002 tenure application was denied. Russell moved to Scripps Institute of Oceanography in 2003.
In 2017, Russell was appointed a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union for "pioneering contributions to the fundamental science of organic aerosols through innovative theory, instrumentation, measurements, and modeling".