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 1215: Looking Down



No wonder my heart is glad, and I rejoice. My body rests in safety.

Can you imagine doing this?

Not for the fainthearted or those who would question their own ability and focus.  I watched this live when it happened.  Among many aspects I was fascinated that he never looked down.  In fact, one of the hardest parts was that he said many times that the optical illusions of the hillside made it hard for him to focus.  But, one thing for sure, he never looked down.  How much of our time and energy do we spend, looking down and worrying about the next missed revenue target, the next product failure, the next bad hire?  We tend to look down a lot and then we wonder why we fall.  

God tells us that we don’t have to worry when we are in His arms.  When we know that our bodies rest in His safety, then really we have nothing to worry about at all.  When we keep our heads up and our eyes focused on Him, we have a balance to our life and priorities that allow us to move forward without fear or worry.  When we look down we are ignoring Him and not using our faith.  Remember what happened to Peter when he looked down as he walked on the water towards Jesus?  Let’s look up to Christ today and bring Him with us into every situation, meeting and conversation today.  Today is looking up already!

Reference: Psalm 16:9 (New Living Translation)