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 1168: Brain STEMs

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“He said to his disciples, “The harvest is great, but the workers are few.”

As I write this, I don’t know if the Immigration Bill will pass through the Senate and/or reach Congress in this coming week.  For all I know by the time this post is published, the bill may have been defeated.  One part of the bill that is important to the business community is the ability to immigrate people with education and experience in the STEM disciplines (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math). The U.S. today has a brain STEM deficiency and the business community is asking our representatives to help us stem the STEM problem.  No one wants this to be the forever answer, but right now we can’t educate internally enough people to keep up with the technology talent needs, so something has to help us fill the gap. How we allowed ourselves to get here and what responsibilities we have in fixing this for the future is also what needs to be explored and understood.  We have the ability to ensure that we have all the workers we need, with the right skills, education and experience if we find the resolve and commitments to find a true fix.  We know the problem will not resolves on its own, so what is the best time to fix it….it has to be today…doesn’t it?

I wonder if God doesn’t  look upon all of us and also see the same dilemma.  In Matthew, He said that the harvest is great, but the workers are few so that we are missing out on reaping what would be Kingdom expansive. God must sometimes look upon us and wonder why we just can’t see what is right in front of us and do something about it. He knows all the talents for His Kingdom are here to be used and expanded upon and then we just don’t use them.  As believers who are committed to bringing glory to God in all that we do, and especially in our work, let’s not stem any of our talents.  The world needs us to be all that we can be for Him and today is the day to be so.

Reference: Matthew 9:37 (New Living Translation)