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 2006: Stumble Upon

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“Look! I stand at the door and knock. If you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in, and we will share a meal together as friends.”

There is a technology app called “Stumble Upon”, which is built to expose you to online stories and experiences that would match with what are your interests, passions, desires, etc. These kinds of tech are cool, but I’m more awed when we do truly stumble upon something that becomes additive to our life, or maybe even life changing. I can list a ton of technologies and experiences that have been that way in my life. What I have found though is that if we want our product, service or company to be one that others will eventually stumble upon, we have to be available, accessible and visible. If our company isn’t visible on social media, well guess how hard it will be to be stumbled upon? So, we have to do our part to place ourselves in the right place, so that others might find us at the right time.

Two weekends ago I was in Phoenix on a Sunday morning. I’d gotten up early to go for a long run and had also chosen a church to attend later in the morning. As I got into the car for the 30 minutes that WAZE told me it would be, I thought to myself, “I hope this church is good if I am driving this far”.  As I turned right, now about 4 minutes into my trip, I see a church to my left with a sign out front that looked kind of cool as the church’s name was unique; “Renovation”  Church.  At the next stoplight I pulled over to the side of the road and I pushed the church name into my phone’s search bar and the first result was, “What to Expect”.  With one-click, I found all I needed to know and with one U-turn I was less than 2 minutes later parked and in the seats of what turned out to be a great worship and message time. As I drove away from the church service, I was reminded that God is all around us just waiting for each of us to initially stumble upon Him and the Good News of Jesus. And yes, sometimes it isn’t more than that that can change our lives forever. I just wonder who in our lives might stumble upon Jesus because we are there for them today.

Reference: Revelation 3:20 (New Living Translation)