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 3K196: Isolation

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Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted there by the devil. For forty days and forty nights he fasted and became very hungry.”

At some point in life we will all think about or be asked; “If you were on a deserted island, what would be the items that you couldn’t live without?”  But, I can’t remember ever being asked, “If you could choose how to get to a deserted island, how would you want to get there?”  That’s because landing on a deserted island would not be a pleasant experience because most of us wouldn’t choose to be that secluded for the rest of our lives.  There is a phenomena that happens to us when we are alone for too long and some of us might have felt like we experienced it during the pandemic.  It’s called, “Ontological Insecurity”. After long enough a person will actually forget their own name and lose all sense of their own identity.  So, the idea of being on a deserted island is really not all that enticing.  But, it’s kind of what happens when in our work we fee alienated or worse, we alienate others and metaphorically end up on a self-imposed island.  There is more than one reason why being a good teammate is a good idea.

Twice we are told of Jesus’ isolation time for us. Once, when He spent 40 days and nights in the desert without food.  He also made the greatest separation for us when he was isolated from the Father for three days between His death and resurrection.  And, we can feel so isolated too when feel like we are pulling or falling back from Him. What we know is that we are not really alone and regardless of the island that we feel we are deserted upon He is with us each and every moment, never leaving us truly alone.

Reference:  Matthew 1: 1-2 (New Living Translation)