Nicole Maffeo Russo, Hospitality Consultant

Nicole Maffeo Russo is one of the leading restaurant and hospitality publicists in New England. With more than 15 years’ experience in the PR industry, she has helped launch some of the region’s most successful restaurants and chefs and has brought them into the national spotlight. She is also a Hospitality Consultant at 451 Marketing and works with several restaurants in Boston under her own company, Nicole Russo Communications, Inc.

Nicole has managed more than twenty notable hospitality and lifestyle brands at one time, including: Todd English Enterprises, Legal Sea Foods, Foxwoods Resort Casino, Restaurant Dante and Puritan & Co. She has assisted in coordinating more than a dozen James Beard Dinners for her clients over the past decade.

Nicole served as publicist to restaurateur Todd English for seven years, helping to elevate his brand and name to a national level. During this time, Nicole helped English launch several new restaurants, promote his various television shows, and help align him with several nationally recognizable events such as the MTV Video Music Awards, the Daytime Emmys, and Jeffrey Katzenberg’s “The Evening Before” Dinner.

More recently, she helped Puritan & Co. Chef/Owner Will Gilson launch his restaurant and helped raise it to a national level where he has been included in Bon Appetit’s “50 Best Restaurants” for 2013, has graced the cover of the Boston Globe and has recently appeared on the Today Show. She also worked with Deuxave Chef/Owner Chris Coombs to launch his newest restaurant, Boston Chops, which was featured as one of the top steakhouses in the country in Food & Wine Magazine’s February 2014 issue.

She previously was the marketing director for FiRE & iCE Restaurant Group where she oversaw the public relations, advertising, and marketing efforts for the multi-unit restaurant.

In 1999, Nicole was able to build her hospitality and luxury brand PR experience during a two-year stint in Las Vegas where she worked with many of the city’s most notable brands including MGM Mirage, Studio 54, and Wolfgang Puck’s restaurants.
Prior to her PR career, Nicole started out in politics where she was a White House intern in the Social Office under President Clinton and then a Legislative Correspondent for U.S. Representative John F. Tierney on Capitol Hill.

Nicole is involved with several charitable organizations including the Shonda Schilling SHADE Foundation, the Foundation to be Named Later, the Bruins Foundation and ReadBoston. Nicole is a graduate of Lynchburg College in Virginia and currently resides in Boston, MA with her husband and two little girls.