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 581: Associations

purposed worKING No Comments

Any good recruiter or hiring manager knows that the best form of recruiting is to get a referral from someone who is really good. If someone who is really good refers them then that means that the person being referred will likely be good too. It is why social sites such as LinkedIn have become so important to recruiters because a social graph is being exposed that can tell us who is associated with whom. It works. Associations with others can have powerful, impacting and long-lasting influences on us. Our parents were always concerned about this weren’t they? Who we associated with would have influence and bearing on how we conducted ourselves and behaved, or didn’t. Even today, with whom we associate is important as they rub off on us and us on them. If we are with generally up, positive and uplifting attitude-minded people then it becomes really hard to be down when with that crowd. Vice-versa is also true. If we hang and associate with those who see the world and life in negative terms then we can find ourselves being pulled down and becoming just as negative. So, we should choose carefully and deliberately our associations. In Proverbs 22:24 we read; “Keep away from angry, short-tempered people, or you will learn to be like them and endanger your soul.” There you have it. We need to be very cognizant of the influences upon us if we are to keep the attitude and example that we know we want to keep. Think about this today. Where you are putting yourself in attitudinal harm’s way, rethink those associations and consider a change or pattern to ensure that you are not being pulled down. It might be that if you do that, others around you at work start coming to associate with you because you are the uplifting one now.

Reference: Proverbs 22:24 (New Living Testament)