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 1119: Forgetfulness


“No, dear brothers and sisters, I have not achieved it, but I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead…”

Okay, in the spirit of full transparency, I have become more forgetful. Call it age, call it too much on my plate, or just call it too much data/information coming at me, but whatever it is, I’m more inclined to be forgetful today than in the past.  I’ve always been a note taker and today I am more so than ever.  What is cool about today is that with so many different pieces of technology that can help us store, organize and recover what we have gathered.  There is Evernote, which I love.  Our phones give us apps like Catcha and built in applications for note taking both written and spoken. There is also Dropbox, Google Drive and Box for storage.  I guess the problem could someday be that we become forgetful about what is stored where, but I suspect there will be a solution for that as well.  What is for certain is that with all of the technology solutions that there shouldn’t be any excuse for forgetfulness. Within the coming years, those who are forgetful will become more obvious for being unorganized, lazy, or symptomatic of a greater problem. Will this make us more efficient and productive within our companies, we will see!
So, there is one area of our lives that we are to be forgetful and that is our forgiveness of others. Nope, we are not to write down all of the transgressions that others have committed against us and keep them for after we forgive.  Imagine if God was to do that with us?  If He managed our sins like a credit score, we’d all be in big trouble.  But, that is not God’s way. His way is to model for us the ultimate in forgetfulness.  Once we ask for forgiveness, He doesn’t keep track, He just forgives and forgets, like we should.  Being truly forgiving and forgetful towards others is one of the most powerful examples of Christ that we can take to work with us today. Imagine if our reputations were to be the person that everyone could count on to be truly forgiving and to never dredge up the past?
Reference: Philippians 3:13 (New Living Translation)