Author Archives: Rusty Rueff

About Rusty Rueff

Rusty Rueff, author of purposed worKING. Rusty Rueff is the former Chairman Emeritus of The GRAMMY Foundation in Los Angeles. He most recently completed the successful 16 month leadership role as Coordinating National Co-Chair for Technology for Obama (T4O) for the reelection of President Obama and ten-years of Board service and President of the Board of Trustees of the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco. Corporately, most recently Rueff was the Chief Executive Officer at SNOCAP, Inc. until the acquisition of the company by imeem, Inc. in April 2008. Before joining SNOCAP in 2005, he was Executive Vice President of Human Resources at Electronic Arts (EA) from 1998 until 2005. He was also with the PepsiCo companies for more than ten years, with the Pratt & Whitney division of United Technologies for two years, and in commercial radio as an on-air personality for six years. Rusty holds an M.S. in counseling and a B.A. in radio and television from Purdue University. In 2003 he was named a distinguished Purdue alumnus, and he and his wife, Patti, are the named benefactors of Purdue’s Patti and Rusty Rueff School of Visual and Performing Arts. He is a corporate director of Glassdoor.com and runcoach. He is the co-founder and Executive Committee Member of T4A.org, serves on the Founding Circle of The Centrist Project and a founding Board Member of The GRAMMY Music Education Coalition. He is also the co-author of the book Talent Force: A New Manifesto for the Human Side of Business. Rusty and his wife, Patti, reside in Hillsborough, CA and Charlestown, R.I.

day 2315: Over The Top

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“Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life.”

When Nike funded the efforts to break the two-hour Marathon, they also created a shoe and clothing to support the results.  They didn’t break the 2:00:00, but they were close. But, what came from the whole initiative was the reinforcement of Nike’s marketing objective: “Give normal people a taste of how it feels to be elite”.  At face value the aspirational nature of their marketing seems like a good thing.  But, as we know, anything to an extreme can go wrong.  Advertising today is trying to making us something that we are not.  We easily fall for it, but over time, we tire of the message.  It is about then that an authentic piece that recognizes where we are and truly wants to make us better shows up. And those are the ones that we want to purchase the product or service.  It is up to us to know the difference in the types of ads and messaging we create and deliver. By the way, I think Nike does a pretty good job making us to want to be better without leaving the real us behind.

Persecution and ridicule of running counter to the culture has been God’s way from the beginning.  Remember, everyone said Noah was a madman and Paul spent a bunch of time in jail and of course Jesus paid the ultimate sacrifice for giving us a new way of salvation and life. We are taught that there isn’t any way around being in the world, but we are not to be of it.  With the current news, it may seem ludicrous to us that so many have succumbed to what seems so obviously wrong, but we also must consider that we can fall into the same siren of the culture with what we watch, read, listen or respond.  I am as guilty as anyone as I try to stay in tune with what is trending or catching attention in the current.  However, I do my best, as we all should, to shield ourselves from those areas in our lives that are vulnerable to being taken over the top.  We each personally know what these areas are and must be sure that we are filling our minds and hearts with God’s teaching and spirit and not letting the other stuff move us away from Him, even if it is what everyone else is doing.

Reference: Proverbs 4:23 (New Living Translation)