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 890: Facing Up, Part 1

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” I tell you the truth, when you were young, you were able to do as you liked;…”

There’s been lots of news so far and there will be more in the coming days about the impending Facebook IPO.  As the larger stories about the company’s financial capability get written we also see the stories about the team and the “human interest” stuff.  The one that caught my eye yesterday was the fashion story of Mark Zuckerberg and his “hoodie”.  It appears that he decided to wear his hoodie to the investor meetings and that caused some stir among Wall Street.  One investor went as far to say as it was “disrespectful”.  I chuckled.  I was always taught that you dress like the customer and if you followed that rule you’d be fine.  In this case, on the surface, it would seem that the Wall Street guy was correct, but when you get down under it, with the over-subscribed demand for Facebook IPO shares, the table has been turned and Mark and Facebook are the customers with all of the money guys wanting/needing their share of the action. If they don’t buy into Facebook and the company gets the $104B market valuation, then they have egg on their face.  There is no doubt that the Facebook team are going to go through growing pains but for the moment, until Friday, they are still the young turks, in control of their own destiny and acting so.  There will be a moment soon when it won’t feel that way and they will need to grow up.  More on that tomorrow…

Jesus had an exchange with Peter about growing up and foretelling what the end of Peter’s life would be about.  It was a good word for all of us in our spiritual journey.  To know what it is to grow older and wiser in our walk with Christ we have to be willing to give up those things that we did when we were “young” and maybe not so wise.  The same can happen to us each day.  We grow older and wiser with each passing day and each moment of decision.  If we think about this regularly, we will find that we can stop for a moment and think before we act or before we speak and apply the filter of what would I have done before and what should I be doing now…later when I know more.  Today, we are going to be faced with decisions that demand us to think backwards before acting forward; decisions that force us to face up to who we are and also who we want to be.  Let’s consider each moment and decision in that light today and see if we are growing older and wiser and more like who Christ wants us to be.

Reference:  John 21:18 (New Living Testament)