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 2996: Crashes

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“Respect everyone, and love the family of believers…”

I’ve daily been following the Tour de France (as I do annually.)  I love the Tour with its combination attributes of team, individual, country, strategy, sheer strength and perseverance.  I am not exaggerating when I say I have never seen as many crashes as I have watched this year.  And, not just individual crashes that happen, but nearly the entire peloton getting knocked down at once.  There are many speculations as to why so many crashes this year, and I was struck of a theory while listening to one of the riders after the early stages say (and I paraphrase), “There was a time on the Tour that we respected each other that we would not put other riders in harm’s way to benefit ourselves.  Those times are gone and we have become reckless with our disrespect of each other to get what we want.”  Wow!  Does that sound familiar in how we are operating and acting in so many segments of life today?  There is a line of respect for others that when we cross it, many can end up hurt.

In the Bible, we are taught to respect everyone and to go beyond that and express love for each other.  If we respect others, we will not do something that hurts them so that we can gain.  When we show that level of respect for other people with whom we work, we aren’t the political climbers that so many are.  We aren’t the ones who are always trying to take credit for someone else’s work.  We aren’t trying to grab the attention at the expense of someone else.  We aren’t the ones who create crashes just to get ahead of someone else.  It’s a good challenge for us to remember that we are to be a people of respect.

Reference:  1 Peter 2:17 (New Living Translation)