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 2108: Rising Leaders

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“For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

It would be so awesome to be able to predict who are going to become the next leaders in our organizations or even within our political system.  If it was orderly, consistent and predictable, how much easier all of our organizational processes and systems would be?  But, it’s not, is it? It’s messy and sometimes because of unexpected changes the next leadership choices can look and feel as if they were random decisions.  I was marveling on a senior leader in an organization where I used to work. Had you asked me back then to predict that this person would have someday been one of the handful of the most senior leaders, I would have been totally wrong.  But, years later, through many organizational changes, strategy shifts, people coming and going, this person grew, developed and stood the test of time, which is not easy.  So, we never know where our rising leaders are going to come from, so our best approach should be to look at everyone as potential for the future!  We will probably be surprised on who rises above the rest.

One predictive that we can count on comes from the words of the Apostle Paul.  If we want to rise to be leaders, let’s remember that if we do so with full humility that we will have the best chance of finding our way forward.  But, if we go into our work with our pride and egos leading, we could find ourselves being set back.  As we work to bring glory to God within our work, humility will always stand out as an attractive trait.

Reference: Luke 14:11 (New Living Translation)