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 3K254: Understand…Validate…Encourage

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“Elizabeth gave a glad cry and exclaimed to Mary, “God has blessed you above all women, and your child is blessed.”

Mini-series:  I am going to write on three very important and impacting things we each need and we each need to do.  That is to understand, validate and encourage others.

Let’s start today with what it means to understand.  Understand is a verb.  That means it is an action that we must undertake.  And, as we know, it takes energy and time to truly understand anything.  When we don’t understand things or understand people, then we run the risk of being ignorant, silly, vulnerable, lost or even taken.  Look no further than the recent collapse of the Crypto-Finance world.  Blockchain technology and cryptocurrency is hard to understand.  I find it very implausible that the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people who have lost real money in the meltdown truly understood what was at stake for their investments to be secure.  Had they, I find it hard to believe that that many people would have taken the level of risk that they did, especially with such large amounts of their savings and net worth.  We must seek to understand and we must work hard to understand. The same is true with other people’s experiences, points of view, feelings, etc.  The downsides are obvious and so are the upsides of truly being one who understands.  Want to be someone who others seek out to gain your opinion?  Be one that truly understands.

The Christmas story that is still fresh in our minds gives us a glimpse into the power of understanding.  Mary was going through an experience that no one else had ever had.  She was trying to explain to others what a miracle was like.  But, who would even begin to understand her?  The one who understood her was Elizabeth.  And why?  Because Elizabeth had done her own understanding work on the miracles and on the backside was able to quickly recognize and understand that Mary was experiencing a miracle, just like she had.  If we can see two amazing people examples of understanding this miracle and see how one person helped another along creating a forever impact on eternity, then surely we can do our best for Him today to seek to understand what and whom we have in our lives.

Reference: Luke 1:42 (New Living Translation)