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 1574: How Really Indispensible Are We?

 “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Yesterday would have been Steve Jobs’ 60th birthday.  Did you know?  You might have read it somewhere, but had you not, would you have known?  Steve Jobs has been one of the most influential innovators in our time and now he is gone, not totally forgotten, but with each passing day will he be forgotten?  30 years from now, if Apple is still around there will be people working there who will have only read about Steve, or not even know who he was.  Seems hard to imagine now, but ask yourself, who was the person who was the CFO of your, or another well known company, 20 years ago?  Here is the lesson. What we are working on today, or what job that we have today, will soon be gone and little really lasts. So, whatever we are working on has to be important and trajectory changing.  What isn’t, needs to be rethought or fit into a larger context that creates significant change or improvement.

What we are doing today matters.  Our free gift of eternal life should be the context from which all else follows.  The rest will be gone soon.  As we plan and think through our day, let’s remember, we and all that is around us is dispensable.  It is only the Good News of Jesus and all that He brings that lasts forever.

Reference:  Romans 6:23 (New Living Translation)