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 1472: Forced Out

“An honest witness tells the truth; a false witness tells lies.”

Last week, another well-known business executive fell.  David Tovar, VP of Corporate Communications for Wal-Mart resigned because he had lied since 1996 that he had a degree from the University of Delaware.  For all of these years, he knew and had many opportunities to not only fess up, but also to clean it up by taking the few hours he had left to complete the degree.  But, he didn’t and it all came to an end and as a corporate communications executive, well, it gets worse.  We’d like to think we can count on everyone in our companies to be honest, but as this proves again, we can’t.  It’s important to always be realistic and ready for when a fault line appears.

We are called on to be honest and to not cut any corners.  It is what it is and when we aren’t we run counter to the example of living in the walk of Christ.  Work gives us many opportunities to shade the truth.  But, we can’t.  I’ve written about it many times, but we can’t be reminded enough that our little white lie is a big ugly thunderstorm of deceit in the eyes of others.

Reference: Proverbs 12:17 (New Living Translation)