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 244: Bring Your Dog To Work Day…

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Yes, there is a national “Bring Your Dog To Work Day” that happens each summer. This is a day, that if an employer chooses to honor, employees can bring their dog to work with them. I would assume that for most people, if they have a dog like mine, it is not a day of great productivity. I am always amazed at the people who have dogs who are so well trained that they can take them to work and the dogs basically sit in the corner or under the desk and you would never know they were there. It’s always a big debate as to whether or not allowing people to bring their dogs to work is a good idea or not. I think it is a pretty cool thing, but for sure it takes maturity to know when your dog behaves well enough to be at work with you, or not. I would guess that most dogs would be better left at home. This past weekend, I taught a lesson at my church’s Children Sunday School regarding how God wants us to fellowship with Him. I used my French Bulldog, Louie, as a metaphor. French Bulldogs are bred to be lap dogs. All he wants to do, all day long, is lay in my lap and cuddle up. The metaphor of Jesus always inviting us to cuddle up in his lap, to me, is strong imagery for the kind of relationship we can have with God if we choose. If I brought Louie to work with me, all he would want to do is sit on my lap in every meeting and while I was doing email, etc. I ran across a verse that tells me that God is after us to be as well-behaved and “trained” as man’s best friends. I think of what it takes for my dog Louie to sit and stay and it makes me think how hard it is for God to get me to do the same. To get Louie to sit and stay, he must submit his will to me and wait until I release him. God does the same with us. See what it says in 1 Peter 5:6; “So humble yourselves under the mighty power of God, and at the right time he will lift you up in honor.” God gives us free-will to either submit or not, but in many ways, we are not that different than our pets. We have to decide within ourselves if we can humble ourselves under the power of another, in our case, our God. And do we see the reward as worth the submission? In our case, it is God saying that at the right time, it will be a lift up from him in honor. Rather than a bring your dog to work day, let’s make it bring God to work day! Let’s think today that we have our Master with us and He is asking us to sit and stay within His presence. Can we submit to our Master and allow ourselves to wait on Him to lift us up? If we can, we can expect that everyday can be a day of being lifted up into the lap of God and what better place is there than that?

Reference: 1 Peter 5:6 (New Living Testament)