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 1288: I Got Your Back

“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.” 

It’s always great to have someone who has your back, regardless of what you do and the mistakes you make. Even better is to have someone who looks forward for you and gives you guidance on what to do next, paving the way for you to assure that you only get the best.  As you read this, are you thinking this is your boss?  Your mentor?  That would be nice, but unfortunately, those people also have their own lives and careers to watch over first. This morning it was reported that William Morris Endeavor will pay $2.3B for the purchase of IMG.  That’s $2.3B of having the backs of others.  Oh don’t we all wish we had an “agent” who we could call on and allow them to manage our careers so we could just go do what we are good at doing, without the usual petty concerns of the office?  But, that’s not in the cards for most of us.  But, what we can do is think like we have an agent.  We can start asking ourselves what would would we do today if we were our agent.  That extra thought could be worth a lot.  If WME sees $2.3B in managing others, we can surely see value in the 100% managing of ourselves.

Now, as believers, we have the super-mega-agent of all time in Jesus.  He came and gave it all for us to let Him run our lives.  His management fee is us accepting His gift.  He wants to be there with us at every turn, every decision, every moment and the more we listen to Him the better it gets. How awesome is it to know that we have Jesus fully at our back!

Reference: Matthew 28:20 (New Living Translation)