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 1894: Far Away

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“Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

The theater production I saw of the bringing to life the poem, “Ode Maritima” was fantastic.  75 minutes long with no intermission and even in Portuguese with having to read English surtitles from video monitors on the sides of the stage, it was compelling drama.  I caught a quote where the poet wrote, “Faraway doesn’t move from its place”.  It struck me as so true in that we romanticize faraway places as we try and bring them closer to us with food, music, theater, fashion, etc.  But, they still remain on the other side of the world.  We are anxious about things we get to do or achieve at certain times that are so far away.  I remember so wanting to be 16 to get my Drivers License that I would have done anything to have been able to move the date up, but my birthday never changed and I had to wait to get there.  In business we set strategies and goals that are far away in either ability to reach or accomplish.  We do this to ensure that we are moving in the right direction to them.  As much as it is fun to say, “The future has shown up”,  it hasn’t, it stays out in front of us as we move through the present and reach to it, not the other way around.  Some things that are faraway we can get to faster, easier or more often, but they are still far away and far away always takes something to get there.  That something can be time and patience, money, travel, etc.  So, we have to ask ourselves, how much will we sacrifice and give up to get to far away, knowing that we can only arrive, if me towards there.

God is the great confounder of the expected.  He gives us both far away, as in heaven, eternal life with Him, or His return to the earth and allows us to move towards each of these with Him.  Yet at the same time, He takes what is God, that can be so far away for so many and brings Himself so close to us that He can enter our hearts and dwell there with us.  He comes to us, for us to accept.  I talk to people who feel that God is so far away from them, and we all will feel that at some point, but how wonderful it is to know that He isn’t ever moving away, that it is just us that pulled back on Him. Jesus and the Holy Spirits presence in us is only as far away as we extend them to be.

Reference:  Matthew 28:20 (New Living Translation)