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 2236: No Waymo

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“Honesty guides good people; dishonesty destroys treacherous people.”

Last week Uber fired the lead engineer of their self-driving autonomous auto initiative.  All signs pointed that he had stolen trade secrets from his former company, Waymo, and was sharing those secrets with Uber.  Most of us are asked now as part of our employment process to sign confidentiality agreements so that what we learn on the job we don’t take with us to competitors or use ourselves to compete with the company.  The breaking of these agreements are usually hard to prove (unless they are blatant like stealing and sharing written documents) so where there was smoke there was fire at Uber.  I see this as a reminder to all of us that what is given to us in confidence needs to stay in such.

How can we stand up for Him if we are dishonest in the workplace?  We can’t.  Every day we are faced with a challenge of the truth and honesty.  We may never be remembered as the best or most successful, but we can be remembered and respected as the most honest and credible of people.

Reference:  Proverbs 11:3 (New Living Translation)