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 979: Crashes

purposed worKING 1 Comment

“With all these things in mind, dear bothers and sisters, stand firm and keep a strong grip on everything we taught you both in person and by letter.”

If you are a regular reader of Purposed worKING, you will notice that I haven’t made a post since Friday September 7th.  Since October 1, 2008, I have on each working day, written and posted to the site, but something strange happened on September 10th that began a series of events that I can only sum up as a set of “crashes”.   It has been a busy season for me and I have found myself over-extended and more consumed than usual.  As such, I have lost a bit of my usual disciplines and with that came a fragility that is not normal for me.  First, many times when I know that I am going to be traveling or disrupted, I will write ahead for these posts and have them timed and ready to go.  In my mind I had done so for the week of 9/10 as this was the week that Patti and I were packing up and making the seasonal transfer back the to west coast. It is always a stressful time and I know that I have to have other things in order to be able to balance all that comes with the move.  So, I went about that week thinking that at least I had my writing in place.  It took a couple of days to realize, but come late in the week I found that I didn’t/hadn’t written ahead and that nothing was being published. As I prepared to get back in the writing saddle, on Friday September 14th, my hard drive crashed and I lost all of the notes and preparation (years worth) that I draw from for my writing (as of this writing the information on the drive has still not been recovered).  So, for the past week I have been somewhat paralyzed and was starting to spiral into questions such as, “Is this the time I am supposed to stop writing this blog?”  And then, like God always does when we earnestly take our questions to Him, I knew that “crashes” are part of our spiritual journey and if we allow the crash to get the best of us, that we are not living and walking with the faith that He has given us.  What shuts and opens our eyes and hearts to God are personal and situational and we each are affected by different crashes in different ways.  These things happen in our work, in our lives, and little and big both can rock us and it is these times that we must return to the One place where we are always stable, in the arms of our Lord.

So, accept my apology for me letting myself get “crashed”.  I have certainly learned a lesson about the importance of always being backed up and I learned a life lesson about the same.  More about that tomorrow.  Paul tells us to be sure to stand firm and keep a strong grip in the crashing times.  These are words to take to heart.

Blessings to you as you continue in your mission to bring glory to God in your work!

Reference: 2 Thessalonians 2:15 (New Living Translation)7