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 908: Reputation Defender

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“How long will you people ruin my reputation? How long will you make groundless accusations? How long will you continue your lies?”
How bad has it gotten on the internet that we are offered now companies that will work on our behalf to repair and remove bad things that are said about us online?  With the explosion of user-generated review content sites, it really shouldn’t be a surprise to us that  companies like Reputation.com and Reputation Defender are finding customers and I might add, charging a hefty amount for their work.  I have heard of companies and individuals being charged over $100K to have their online search results altered and improved.  While at first it sounds crazy but in some ways it’s the modern day malpractice or general liability insurance coverage.  If you are a professional service provider, say a dentist, and your next unhappy patient turns out to be a major online influencer, you could be in real trouble, real fast.  The fact of the matter is that it has now become the norm to check out the reviews of companies just like have done for a long time for entertainment.  Today it is just as normal to check Yelp as it is to got to Rotten Tomatoes or MetaCritic.  It’s a scary world if your reputation matters for your livelihood, and whose doesn’t really?  Even to get a new job you should expect that someone is checking the internet to put together a story on you.  And, it’s not going to get better. Instead we should be prepared for the greater scrutiny that the internet and the transparency of the web provides.
Everyday that we go to work and go about our daily business we are putting our reputation out in the wild to be challenged, reshaped or denigrated. As believers we carry not only our own reputation on our shoulders we also shoulder the reputation, or maybe the only exposure that someone else will have of what it means to be a follower of Jesus.  When I was growing up my Father would tell me that what I did outside of our house not only reflected on me, but the whole family.  I carried that with me and when I got in trouble I was reminded of it by my Father in ways that I haven’t forgotten. See, we are reflections of Jesus to others and we have to extra cognizant of this responsibility.  Let’s today and this week let it sink in and be sure that we aren’t letting anything in our work create something that puts us in the position of having to defend our own reputation. 
Reference: Psalm 4:2 (New Living Translation)