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 2021: Getting A Rise

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“And because Joseph was a descendant of King David, he had to go to Bethlehem in Judea, David’s ancient home. He traveled there from the village of Nazareth in Galilee“

Wow, does it seem that the objective of some of our societies’ most  influential people is just to get a rise out of others by making shocking and sometimes disparaging and vulgar statements.  And we wonder why our children don’t understand us when we try and teach civility and manners.  There is nothing wrong about being provocative and in fact, our marketing must be so, otherwise we get lost in the clutter.  We also have to be relevant and on the edge to be able to attract the best talent to our companies, but we don’t need to go over that edge.  We should probably think about what that line is where we have caused our customers, consumers, shareholders and employees to rise up in the wrong way.

The Christmas account tells of Jesus born in Bethlehem.  I didn’t know until I was teaching it in Sunday School a few weeks ago that Bethlehem means, “house of bread.”  As soon as I read this I said, “Of course it does”.  The references to bread throughout the Bible are many, including Jesus telling us that He is the bread of life.  Bread can only rise once.  Unless, that bread of life is Jesus who rose again for us.  Jesus rose and Jesus did get a rise out of the world as everything changed after Him.  So, yes, we hope that we can create a rise in the spirits of others, a rise their hope, a rise their openness to God.  But, it starts with us being ready to rise for Him.

Reference:  Luke 2: 4 (New Living Translation)