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 1449: Inversion

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“The commander of the Lord’s army replied, “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy.” And Joshua did as he was told.”

Inversion. It’s a fairly new word for most of us, but we read about it almost every day now in the Business news.  Inversion is where a US company will merge with a foreign corporation in order to reincorporate in the international country, with the hope of driving taxes down.  We have seen this happen now a few times in the last month and some well-known companies are now looking to do the same.  I can’t fault the companies for wanting to reduce their tax burdens but doing business goes beyond the paying of taxes.  Sometimes you have to take a strong stand that you know is going to hurt the bottom line just to do the right thing.  CVS did that with withdrawing all tobacco products from their stores. (Ironically, their competitor Walgreens is a company that is contemplating completing an inversion transaction). There are many constituents that we have to take into consideration that matter (customers, employees, public opinion, etc.) that go beyond just the bottom line.

We need to recognize more fully that where God has placed us is all that we need and that if we are working and living within the closest we can get to His will that the place where we are is holy ground, fertile for His work to be done through us.  Let’s not run, or create our own inversions to avoid what God wants us to do for Him, in the place that He has put us.

Reference: Joshua 5:15 (New Living Translation)