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 1956: The Corporation

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 “…so it is with Christ’s body. We are many parts of one body, and we all belong to each other.”

In 1794 Stewart Kyd wrote,  “The Treatise on the Law of Corporations”.  He wrote, “[A corporation is] a collection of many individuals united in one body, under a special denomination, having perpetual succession under and artificial form, and vested, by policy of the law, with the capacity of acting, in several respects, as an individual.”  To fully understand the impact that this treatise had, you have to realize that before this, there were no corporations.  Up until that time all work was done by individuals under the power of government or the power of the church.  But, after this, the beginning of what we know today as normal (and often quite powerful…sometimes far more than government or religious institutions), we expect to work within corporations (large and small) to earn our living.  Embedded within the definition is the uniting of individuals into one body, what we today would consider to be engagement, alignment and loyalty.  What we do know is that nothing in the definition makes this unity automatic and that we must work hard, even harder than ever, to allow the individual to find those uniting elements that make us want to work as one.

Paul wrote of the kingdom of God as a collection of body parts that cannot function properly and wholly without each other. When we act out on our own, separating ourselves from the rest of the body, we are not only severing our ability to contribute but also constraining the potential of the whole.  God calls us to be part of His body not only on Sunday, but every day and in every situation.  In our work lives we work hard to be a part of the team.  In our faith, we can work just as hard to be a productive part of His team.

Reference: Romans 12:5 (New Living Translation)