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 1194: Availability – Part 1

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“Don’t think only about your own affairs, but be interested in others, too, and what they are doing.” 

I just returned from two days at GRAMMY Camp New York.  As Chairman of the Board of the GRAMMY Foundation, I absolutely love going to GRAMMY Camp and seeing the best of the best high schoolers pursuing their dreams of making it in the music industry.  The New York GRAMMY Camp happens at Converse’s Rubber Tracks Studio in Brooklyn.  Converse donates the week of the studio’s time and support to the GRAMMY Foundation. Having this availability to be in a state-of-the art studio is just amazing and so appreciated. What’s even more amazing is that Converse makes this studio available to any musician and best of all they provide the studio for free, without any strings attached; Rubber Tracks Apply . When I tell people this they are taken back with Converse’s generosity and just how cool it is that with this one gift of availability they are building deep loyalty and commitment with their consumers.  One band that forever remembers the one time that they were able to record that one album because of Converse will wear Chuck Taylor’s forever. Availability of what we have to offer; be it space, knowledge, people, services, etc. are powerful, powerful consumer brand building tools!

We are God’s ambassadors and message carriers.  When we make our talents, time and treasures available to others we have the opportunity to demonstrate the transfer and availability of God’s love.  Being available, while not hard, does take work and sacrifice, but with all the sacrifice that was made for us making a little sacrifice to be interested in and available to others seems like not that hard to do.  Can we find one way today to do so?

Reference: Philippians 2:4 (New Living Testament)