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 50: Reputation Trumps

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We work so hard. We work hard for so many things. We do our very best day in and day out with the rewards tied to a day in the future when we can sit back and rest and reflect on a job well done. During that journey we set different goals for ourselves and we strive to meet and exceed those objectives. One that invariably becomes a measurement of how we are doing, and our ability to enjoy the latter years of our lives when we are not working, is our financial goals. There is nothing wrong with having financial targets and in fact any good financial planner will tell you that having goals and plans are essential to getting to where you want to be in the future. However, what can lead us astray is when we put that financial target above all else and we find ourselves in a situation where that measure literally takes over on us. I know too many people who because of this have gotten turned around and messed up with their priorities and let their perspective get our of whack. This turned into some bad decision-making and for some life long consequences of their actions as they blindly chased their financial dreams. The Proverbs tell us how to keep that in balance. Proverbs 22:1 says; “Choose a good reputation over great riches, for being held in high esteem is better than having silver and gold”. That says it loudly and clearly. Whenever we are in a situation where we put our reputations at risk while questing for silver or gold, we are sailing in dangerous waters. As you think about today, remember that our reputations proceed us and at the end of the day, it will be our reputations that will outlive us. Let us be careful about our priorities and the outputs of why we work.

Reference: Proverbs 22:1 (New Living Testament)