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 854: OMGPOP

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“What is faith? It is the confident assurance that what we hope for is going to happen.”

Last week we read of a little company called, “OMGPop” that had developed and launched an iphone app called, “Draw Something”. Within weeks of launch the app had been downloaded over 30 million times and everywhere you turned someone was talking about the game. Within the same weeks the game big company Zynga swooped in and drew up their offer for OMGPop and days/hours later the deal had closed at a purportedly $180 million dollar sum. If that doesn’t feel like 1999 all over again, nothing does. Later we learned that at the time, OMGPop was on their last dollars and if that Draw Something had not become a hit that the company was headed for the dead pool. Out of nowhere and into the jet stream in a flash. It doesn’t happen often but when it does it gives MBA classes and young entrepreneurs a new story to tell and a new motivation. The problem with the story line is that OMGPop is one of a thousand, but that’s okay. What we need to see is the possibility, the dreams and the conquests to be made. These are what keep the entrepreneurial flames burning.

For those of us who are in this world, but strive hard to not be of it, moments like OMGPop’s can be hard to reconcile. We may think that because we are living our lives in accordance to God’s desire for us that we should be given and have our OMGPop reward in our own work. That is not what God says to us. What we are told and know that is if we walk in the will of the Lord that by our faith, that those things that we hope for we can with “confident assurance” knowing will happen. But what we don’t know, nor can we learn somehow, is what is truly in God’s will for us. That is where we are to put our faith and our hope; in the lap of God so that His will will come to fruition for us. What we hope for in the future can only be fulfilled with our faith now and ongoing, but let’s put those hopes and faith where they can be of most use; for what God can do for us in His Kingdom.

Reference: Hebrews 11:1 (New Living Testament)