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 2218: Bringing It Forward

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“Though I am the least deserving of all God’s people, he graciously gave me the privilege of telling the Gentiles about the endless treasures available to them in Christ.”

I am always amazed at those who can see around the corner to the future.  These people can predict (never perfectly, but almost) what is coming next.  But, even as impressive as this is, even more so are those who can translate the future into a language and way that the rest of us can understand and appreciate.  Well, we are soon to lose one of those people when Wall Street Journal reporter and author, Walt Mossberg will retire in June. This was Walt’s retirement message:

“So it seems fitting to me that I’ll be retiring this coming June, almost exactly 47 years later. I’ll be hanging it up shortly after the 2017 edition of the Code Conference, a wonderful event I co-founded in 2003 and which I could never have imagined back then in Detroit.

I didn’t make this decision lightly or hastily or under pressure. It emerged from months of thought and months of talks with my wise wife, my family, and close friends. It wasn’t prompted by my employer or by some dire health diagnosis. It just seems like the right time to step away. I’m ready for something new.”

We need people like Mossberg around us.  Do we have someone, or more than one, who work on our staff who are always seeking what is new and different and then more importantly, can communicate to everyone else in a way that makes us all want to go there with them?

Isn’t this why Jesus gave us a glimpse and promise of what is to come? I have always wondered about what it would have been like to have been one of the people who saw and interacted with Jesus during the period when He was on Earth between His resurrection and ascendancy to Heaven. Could it have been that we don’t know much about that time because the people who saw Him just couldn’t explain it to others?  Maybe what they experienced was just too much to put into words.  While we don’t physically see Jesus today, we do experience Him in our lives and He calls upon us to do our best to explain to others what He is doing within us.  Yes, it is hard to talk to others about what is to come and all that Jesus is about, but if we just talk from our own story, then we are indeed translating Him for others to understand.

Reference:  Ephesians 3:8 (New Living Translation)