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 427: Why We Mentor

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I have been involved with a number of mentoring programs and even helped some companies who were facilitating mentoring across corporations. What I have learned over the years is that everyone needs a mentor and few want or know how to be one. Early on in my career I was assigned a mentor. He was a great guy but at the end of the day we didn’t share the same values and principles or interests. But, I was assigned to him because he was more senior, successful and therefore, I should have been able to learn something from him and he should been able to teach something to me. Both were true and to some extent it worked, but he was never someone that now I call out as a mentor. Mentors are those who we seek out and because of the generosity of their heart and their spirit, they give the time, energy and emotional commitment to teach, inspire, listen and encourage. When you find a mentor who is like this, then it can be a magical and fulfilling relationship that lasts. I believe part of our purpose in bringing glory to God in our work is to follow in the footsteps of the great teacher and mentor, Jesus. It does not take long in the accounts of His life throughout the four Gospels to see how He mentored His disciples and others. He modeled to us a relationship where he walked, talked, ate, worked and ministered together. His direct disciples truly got the mentoring of all mentoring. We read in Proverbs 9:9 that our mentoring efforts are certainly not in vain; “Instruct the wise, and they will be even wiser. Teach the righteous, and they will learn even more.” Today, I would challenge ourselves on how much mentoring are we doing? If we don’t have at least one person who would say that we have been a mentor to them, then we need to make ourselves more accessible and open to that possibility. Everyone needs a mentor. Why can’t you be the one?

Reference: Proverbs 9:9 (New Living Testament)