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 2047: Digital Handshakes

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“Then a despised Samaritan came along, and when he saw the man, he felt compassion for him. Going over to him, the Samaritan soothed his wounds with olive oil and wine and bandaged them.”

We get introduced to others over the internet all the time.  I’ve never been really comfortable in how we are to respond. I tend to say, “nice to meet you”, even though it doesn’t really match up at all with what it means to truly meet someone.  So, really what we are doing is making a “digital handshake”.  Like a real-life, analog handshake, there isn’t all that much more there other than a connection, until we go deeper and find the similarities of each other and then it is there that we become truly connected.  That said, it all starts with the first connection, so we should make the most of each digital handshake we are afforded.

The Samaritan could have walked right by the injured man.  Others who were even more likely to have assisted had passed, so it wouldn’t have been much skin off of his back had he just walked on by.  But, he didn’t.  He not only stopped, he engaged.  And this is the example we are given, for a reason.  We have many moments a day that we can choose to either pass by, or we can stop, bend down and engage, way beyond just a glance.  There is someone today who needs us to be the one who goes beyond just the handshake.

Reference:  Luke 10:33-34 (New Living Translation)