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 2839: The Way Of The Segway

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They said it was just a matter of time and that time has come.  The Segway is no more.  Once heralded as the revolution of personal transportation it became best known for carrying packs of tourists around cities and a way for police officers to get around airports and malls.  There were lots of reasons that the Segway didn’t make it, but as one person said, “Riding one made people look ridiculous”.  We can’t ever forget that no matter the degree of technology advancement human factors still matter.  Think Google Glass(es).  How about why Virtual Reality (VR) goggles are taking so long to catch on?  Exoskeletons? All are hampered by the human condition of how we look, how others perceive of us and ultimately how using these technologies make us feel.  Yes, we are humans at the end of it all and being human makes a difference.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately (you might be able to recognize that from my lackluster writing last week).  There is so much swirling around us now to think about that trying to get down to the basics, the heart of the matter, the finite truths is very hard to do right now.  But, it is time and energy well spent if we are to be able to sort through things well.  In this time of reflection, I have found myself coming back to the Serenity Prayer many times.  Like so much of our human nature (as mentioned above) there are things that we just have to recognize we can’t change or influence and things that do and don’t really matter (more on this tomorrow) so we are better off in starting with accepting what we can’t change and then growing from there.

Reference: The Serenity Prayer

“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.” –  Reinhold Niebuhr