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 1973: Pokes

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“The angel replied, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.”

Does anyone really understand what a “Poke” on Facebook really means?  I don’t Facebook “Poke” because it sounds wrong and I don’t know what to do with it when someone pokes me.  But, I’ve had to poke many a person while in business to get them to wake up, get going, follow up, respond, or just do something.  Pokes are uncomfortable to receive and to give, although Steve Jobs thought about poking in a different context.  He said, “The minute that you can understand that you can poke life and actually something will…pop out the other side and that you can change it, you can mold it, that’s maybe the most important thing…once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.”  Steve saw the poke as the beginning of something big, vast, unexpected and potentially even something that would end up unexplained. So maybe, we should poke but only poke with the expectation of something grand and wondrous to result.

I often feel like the Holy Spirit is God’s way to poke us.  When we know what we should do. When we can hear that voice calling.  When we feel the need to act.  When we accept that we need to jump, but need a nudge…need a poke.  When we are listening for God we might just feel His poke.

Reference: Luke 1:35 (New Living Translation)