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 860: Boldly Stepping Forward

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“It was about faith…”

We love bold businesses. Bold businesses bring to the consumer products and services that amaze us and have us wearing their tee shirts and placing stickers of their logo on our notebooks and hardware. If we each were to think of a company that fits this mold for us, we would quickly come to our own list. And if helped to come to the definition, we could use the word bold and feel that it describes these companies. We often wonder why certain companies get to this level of respect and others don’t. To me it is clear; each of these companies have a clear and concise vision and then build their organization with strong talent to make that vision a reality. It is when these two vectors intersect that companies get bold and consumers and customers recognize it too. Finding our way to have a bold business is a good challenge and one that we should think about when we decide where to take our businesses, the direction of our teams, and the way that we think about the future.

The eleventh chapter of Hebrews walks us through many of the great people of faith in the Bible. As we read about each person and their actions, the writings start with, “It was by faith…”. Each of us have our challenges and those things that get in the way of our job performance and what we believe would be success for us. I used to think that men like Noah, Abraham, Moses, etc. were somehow super-charged with faith, but as I grew older and learned more about the nature of people I found that each of these men were just like us. They each had their lives, like ours, filled with family, friends, co-workers, peers, etc. who challenged them and in some cases ridiculed and/or persecuted then as well. But, they were able to go forward boldly because of their faith. This is the lesson for us. If we allow our faith to be magnified then we can be bold in how we live and work. As we go into this Holy Week, let us ensure that our faith is strong so that we can boldly step forward for Him.

Reference: Hebrews Chapter 11