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 2221: Right In Front Of Our Eyes

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“A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’  The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.”

Sometimes it is right in front of our eyes, but we can’t see it.  Right in front of our eyes now, traditional retail (as we have known it) is flat-lining.

From the New York Times this past week:  “More workers in general merchandise stores have been laid off since October, about 89,000 Americans…” This is more than entire other industries. I  grew up enjoying wandering around the multiple stores in a mall, taking hours at a time to browse racks upon racks and even when I walked away (too bad we didn’t have Fitbits to measure steps then) I felt “okay”. Some kind of entertainment or progress had occurred.  And then I, like everyone else, would do it again over and over…walking the mall, thinking that something new might jump out at us. (BTW, I also have this same feeling sometimes when staring at the refrigerator).  But, it has become clear that these days are gone…for good.  How many years until the mall is torn down and something else stands there?  And, how long until each traditional retail store that we once knew is gone…for good?  Is this not the power of the internet to crash the future into us like the asteroid that could have hit Earth last week?

When we consider all of this change in our society, it becomes even more important that we hold to our own context to assuredly place and secure what is happening, versus having the context created for us.  God gave us a totally clear understanding of how we are to contextualize and place every action – Love Him first and then love others!  Anything that runs counter to that for us, runs counter to what He told us on how the world would show up in front of our eyes.

Reference:   Matthew 22: 39-41 (New Living Translation)