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 2856: Just How Long?

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“Trust in the Lord and do good. Then you will live safely in the land and prosper.”

I read a quote.  I wrote it down, but I didn’t write down who wrote it so I quote them here without attribution, “Things take longer to happen than you think they will, but then they happen much faster than you thought they could.”  Sit with that for a moment and apply to the positive changes we desire.  Then apply to the negative changes that have happened to us.  Then apply it to those things we thought would never change, but did.  The author of the quote seems to hit the nail right on the head.  There is a lot of conceptualizing of the future going on right now.  Will we return to a normal we knew just over six, months ago or will that normal never come back and our next normal is still to be figured out?  Whichever it is, we can count on us, as people, always being a little slower on the uptake and being surprised by how fast what comes next happens.  I’m not sure we can change that but what we can do is always be doing our best to forecast, scenario plan and be ready for whatever it is that comes.

At the end of the day, if we are truly walking in faith, what happens around us is totally out of our control. What we can control is how we respond and react to what happens.  Yes, we can make our differences and we shouldn’t absolve ourselves of personal responsibility and action, but if we hold to that only as what it is all about, then not only do we miss the point, but we also will find ourselves ultimately living and working as powerless, anxious, frustrated and even depressed.  I will go out on a limb here and say that we are in a time of a testing of our faith. How do I know that? Because I personally feel it.  I want things to change to the better much faster than they are, or likely will happen, but at the essence of it all comes the test of while I am trying to do good as the scripture above says we must, I must also put my trust in the Lord.  The promise that we are given doesn’t come with only one half of the equation.  Just how long will it be before the promise is fulfilled?  Maybe that depends on the level of trust I/we have in Him.

Reference: Psalm 37:3 (New Living Translation)