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 596: Just Who Do You Think You Are?

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Arrogance, pride and hubris. The triple threat of career killers. I was at a presentation last week where the presenter was trying to be funny by putting down other people. The problem was that the arrogance he exuded was too true to his form and too real for the people in the crowd to think it humorous. There were few laughs. A title in our work life means much but it can also mean too much if we are not careful. Because we have letters before or after our names does not make us who we are. Those letters can define what we do, but should not define who we are. When let those get mixed up then our ego takes over and we are on the way to becoming someone we won’t want to be. In the business world, these things catch up with us. We may be able to think more highly of ourselves than others for awhile but when the results falter, or we stumble, or we make the inevitable mistake, then we will find that those who we thought were below us, step aside and will not catch us. So, we have to constantly check our ego and check it at the door when we think we are getting too big for our britches. Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians, “I don’t want anyone to think more highly of me than what they can actually see in my life and my message.” How poignant and applicable to all of us. Let’s take today and do a little checking to see where we are letting our egos run away on us, pull it back and be sure that we really know who we are.

Reference: 2 Corinthians 12:6 (New Living Testament)