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 3K63: Do No Evil

“Abstain from all appearance of evil.”

When Google was started, the two founders stated openly that the company would be run on the principle of “Do No Evil”.  When I first heard it, I thought it a good mantra as there is much evil that one can do with a search business.  Just imagine what turmoil would erupt if someone famous and important had their search queries over the last year made public?  Yes, to do that would be doing something very evil.  But, there are plenty of other areas that Google has been faced with that weren’t as obvious and today many inside and outside of the company question whether or not “Do no evil” still holds up as a defensible philosophy.  Maybe they would have done better avoiding that, which even appears evil.

We are called to live to a higher standard.  It’s not good enough to just do no evil, we have to also abstain from even the appearance of evil.  It’s a tall order, but one that if we take seriously and ask Him to support and protect us up from those things that have an air and appearance of not being good, He will point those things out to us so that we are aware.  This way we don’t put on the wrong appearances.

Reference:  1 Thessalonians 5:22 (King James Version)