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 1223: Keys

purposed worKING No Comments



You can make this choice by loving the Lord your God, obeying him, and committing yourself firmly to him. This is the key to your life…

It seems so long ago that we went to work with keys in our pocket. We had one for the door into the building and then one for our office and maybe another for the storage room, or even the washroom.  Keys are a thing of the past and before long all offices, cars and homes will be without them and we won’t even need them any longer.  But, I imagine that even generations from now we will still use the word “key” and consider that those who have the keys are the most important.  When I was a boy I told my Dad that I wanted to be the like the janitor at our school and have a big key ring with hundreds of keys on a ring that hung from my belt.  My Dad smiled and said to me, “No son, you want to be the person who only has one key on his key ring.”  It was a great lesson and one I never forgot.  We should think about this in our business as well.  Our customers, partners and employees want to feel like they only have to have one key to access everything they need.  Consider how many keys we ask them to carry today and how hard or easy it is to open the doors that they desire to pass through?

We want the key to life and we are told what that key is in Deuteronomy.  To pursue any other key, we will only end up standing at a locked door of frustration and futility.  What keys are we carrying to work with us today?  The keys looking for power, fame, or prestige?  Let’s leave those behind and instead carry only the key that is the one that unlocks love, grace, mercy and forgiveness!

Reference: Deuteronomy 30:20 (New Living Translation)