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 1402: Whatever You do…

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While on a pilgrimage walk on the Camino de Santiago (St. James Way) in Spain, I asked some of the most committed and courageous faith-driven business leaders I know to guest contribute to Purposed worKING.  Enjoy! – Rusty
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 “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men.”

Do all Christians have to be zealots? No. But maybe. In their own way. So why aren’t you dropping your occupation and all your possessions and joining Jesus’ cause? John did. Andrew did. Matthew did. A bunch of grown men, gainfully employed, dropped everything they had on the shores of their lives and set sail to follow Jesus. They simply made the decision and then walked off their jobs. Easy as that.
When people ask me – actually, that’s inaccurate, nobody asks me, but I feel the question being asked nonetheless – why am I not doing more for the Lord? I always have trouble answering. Certainly because we could all be doing more, but specifically, for me, it’s tricky. I’m in entertainment. And what good is entertainment in the grand scheme? “You should be making Christian films” they say. “Why aren’t you telling a more literal, if not metaphoric, Jesus story and spending countless hours writing to save souls from damnation rather than protagonists from lovelessness? What good is a romantic comedy anyway in the eyes of God? Should you really be spending that much time crafting the perfect G-rated fart joke?”
I don’t know. They’re all good questions and sometimes I don’t have an answer for them. But this verse comforts me all the same. Sure, maybe it simply justifies my purpose in life, but it also, well, maybe that’s the only reason, it justifies my purpose in life. Which is another way of saying it encourages me. ‘Whatever you do…’ is not a commandment to stop what we’re doing, to walk out of the operating room or the fire station and go join the church. It’s doing the opposite. It’s reaching out to us, everyone, everywhere, doing all sorts of random things for a living: Backhoing. Banking. Fitting Room Attending. And it’s saying to all of us, this work we do, be it noble, be it banal, go and do it well. Do it mightily. Do it as if the Lord Himself was asking us to do it. Asking us for help picking a sweet watermelon or writing a catchy log line.
There will always be opportunities to spread the Gospel within the sweaty crevices of our fields. So whatever we do do, whatever function in society we fill, if we keep our eyes on the Lord while doing it we should be alright. And yes, I realize I said do do. See? Comedy. What would the Lord do without us screenwriters?
Reference:   Colossians 3:23 (New Living Translation) 
Phil Lorin