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 833: Pump Decisions

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“…Be honest in your estimate of yourselves, measuring your value by how much faith God has given you.”

Wow, has the political rhetoric heated up over no other than the price of a gallon of gasoline at the pump! It is true if we step back and look at it that a one dollar difference in gas prices, depending on your consumption patterns, but on the average, is much more value, or costly, than a change in our taxes. I have read that a one dollar swing can equate to a $100 billion dollar tax increase/decrease. So, most Americans would like a lower gas price, if for nothing else, it makes the goings-on of their everyday lives cheaper. I also see (and tend to agree more) that if we want to lessen our dependence on fossil fuels (wherever in the world they come from) that there must be a lessening of dependence on that form of energy and we must make some new decisions at the pump. Behavior change is hard, and we all know from the Great Recession that when things get tight economically we can learn how to do with less and we make choices. I don’t know the answer on gas prices as it is way above my macro-economic understanding, but I do believe that we continue to chase after something that will someday, in how many generations I don’t know, be gone and in the meantime, we should do what we can to look towards other ways, like renewable energy, to fulfill those needs. We grapple with this as consumers and we also have no choice but to grapple with this as businesses.

Teaching in Sunday school yesterday (1st-6th graders) we learned about faith and how to put faith into action. What was great about that lesson, in comparison to the energy source/use questions we face, is that faith is the greatest renewable. When we become believers, we do so by faith. From there, God gives us an unending pump to draw from. Faith doesn’t run out, no matter how far you drill to find more. In fact, the more you draw upon it, the more that will be there for us. We are all given the opportunity to capture and bring to life as much faith as we desire. One person is not given more than another. It is only that one person will rely on it more than someone else, thereby giving them more and more to draw from. So, today, let’s pull up to the “Faith Pump” and fill it up, and keep coming back for more and more and more, without reservation, and without a worry that it will ever run out.

Reference: Romans 12:3 (New Living Testament)