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 1964: Microbursts

purposed worKING No Comments

“For the word of the LORD holds true, and we can trust everything He does”

A week ago today at a little after 6:00am I felt I needed to wake up. Something wasn’t right. When I did get up and looked out the window I said, “Patti, get up, there is a storm coming and we need to close the house up, fast!” I went out on the second story porch to bring in the American Flag that was whipping so hard I thought its solid wooden pole was going to snap. As I struggled to remove the pole from its holder the wind threatened to lift me over the side of the railing. As the clouds opened up with rain, lightning and what was clocked at 85mph winds, we got the house closed up and watched for the next 20 minutes what nature can do when at full fury. Our community spent the next two days in the dark without power, Internet, cable or phone. The National Weather Service called it a “Microburst”. Given that heavy furniture flew in the direction against the wind, and trees and power poles snapped in half, I’d have called it what I grew up in Indiana experiencing, a “Tornado”. Regardless, it did significant damage and messed up schedules and lots of things. I didn’t write last week as trying to handle other stuff got in the way. I was reminded of how we have many microbursts metaphorically within our business and when they hit, out of seemingly nowhere, they can set us back, make us stop and reevaluate and even force us to change direction. There isn’t much good I can say about these events, other than the teach us to appreciate and be grateful for what we have and what is good about the normal and routine.

The microbursts of life are all around us and when they hit we have the choice to how we react. We can fret and let them set us back emotionally or we can turn them over to God to carry us through. I know I could have done a little more of the turning over last week and maybe I wouldn’t have gone into the little slump I did. But that is what God also does with microbursts, He reminds us and He teaches us. It’s then up to us to learn and remember.

Reference: Psalms 33:4 (New Living Translation)