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 1997: Cancellations

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“During the forty days after he suffered and died, he appeared to the apostles from time to time, and he proved to them in many ways that he was actually alive. And he talked to them about the Kingdom of God.”

A music industry pundit that I read, Bob Lefsetz (I think first time I have been able to weave him into a purposed worKING), wrote an interesting rant yesterday about being asked to take meetings and then being cancelled upon.  He was upset that someone reached out to him, asked him for his time and then without an emergency, just cancelled the meeting.  Bob reminded me of the negative power of a cancellation.  Really, why do we ever cancel on someone else?  Unless it really is a medical or emotional emergency or being stranded on the side of the road, it does kind of come down to what is most important and the message we send to others.  When we cancel, which I do way too often, it is sending the message that the other person is not as important as we we think we are.

God never cancels on us.  Jesus never not showed up. In fact, He continued to show up in times that none of us would have! Makes me think that how we follow through on our commitments can be very Christ-like, or not.  Something to think about today.

Reference: Acts 1:3 (New Living Translation)