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 2155: Baggage Unclaim

“Instead, clothe yourself with the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ.”

A paintbrush, a mirror, band-aids, a measuring tape, and toilet paper.  These were all items that a few weeks ago the pastor in our church in Rhode Island (where we attend when we are there) removed from her backpack as she prepared herself for the coming of Jesus in the Advent season.  As I looked at the items and thought later about each of them, I was struck not only by the symbolism of what these items represent for the construct of the baggage of our lives, but also that the same can be said about the cultures of our companies and organizations.  There is plenty of painting over the real problems, egos, hurting, comparison to each other, and messiness in how we treat each other.  It reminds me why the greatest impact we can have sometimes in our work is that we don’t represent what will naturally occur in company cultures, but instead we try and avoid the baggage and go about our work in a way that doesn’t carry or create additional cultural baggage.

We have just a couple of weeks left before we celebrate Christmas.  Each and every day between now and then gives us the opportunity to make way in our lives for Jesus.  Today would be a great day to take an inventory of what needs to come out of our backpack to rid ourselves of the baggage that could get in the way of us having the greatest of Christmas seasons.

Reference:  Romans 13:14 (New Living Translation)