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 3K6: The Bigger Stage

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“What’s more, who can say but that you have been elevated to the palace for just a time as this?”

Every four years (or in this year’s case 5 years) we bring together the best athletes in the world at the time and provide them a place to compete for Olympic Medals.  Every Olympics multiple World Records are set.  What is it about competing at the Olympics that brings out the best in athletes?  Many of them get the opportunity to compete against each other at events leading up to the Olympics but at the “big games” we see personal bests from so many of the athletes.  I think it is about the “Bigger Stage”.  When they compete in the Olympics, they compete for their country and the earning of a place in history.  Everyone of them have pointed their years of training to this moment and when they get there they are ready.  Not everyone peaks then, but many do.  What if we had moments when our employees were to peak because we put them on a bigger stage?  It can’t happen daily, but what if we could create the opportunity for our people to reach for their full potential and peak?  It’s worth considering what we could do to make that happen.

Sometimes God puts us on a bigger stage and it becomes our moment.  If it could happen to Esther, it can happen to us.  In order to be ready, we have to be prepared, but we also have to be finely attuned to know that this is our time.  In Esther’s case it was her loving and trusted cousin who nudged her forward.  In our case it might be friends, advisors, pastors and/or The Holy Spirit.  The point is this, God didn’t give us the talents that we have to not expect that will have our moment.  We just need to be ready!

Reference: Esther 4:14 (New Living Translation)