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 2849: What T&E?

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“No accounting of this money was required from the construction supervisors, because they were honest and trustworthy men.”

I was talking to a guy I know who runs a very large Private Equity fund in NYC.  We were reflecting on all of the changes since March and one of the things he said that caught my attention was,  “I haven’t signed a T&E report since the end of February and I doubt I’ll be signing one for the rest of the year.”  There’s nothing terribly profound about that, other than if in his firm, and he himself, there have been no travel or entertainment expenses for the past four and a half months then we can clearly see through that to the dismal earnings of airlines, hotels and restaurants. The other observation we made was that in corporate America there have always been those who “pad” their T&E to benefit themselves with an offset to what should be their own expenses. It’s the person who is always taking someone else to lunch and when on a trip, Starbucks shows up on the expense report, etc. when they would have always gotten Starbucks when at home and would have eaten lunch anyway. It will be interesting to see how those people find a new T&E expense to submit.

The Bible is filled with examples of those who were trustworthy in the eyes of God and others.  We get those examples and accounts because God is challenging us to be the same. I love that in 2 Kings that this is called out so explicitly that these workers were so honest that no accounting was required.  Imagine being able to work like that?  We can, if we strive to be that honest, that straightforward, that transparent in all that we do. We are all being challenged now to reinvent who we are and how we will work and live going forward.  Let’s today think hard on all that God wants us to be.

Reference: 2 Kings 12:15 (New Living Translation)