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 2790: Narratives

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“My health may fail, and my spirit may grow weak, but God remains the strength of my heart;
he is mine forever.”

We know that stories and the narratives we tell and use are extremely powerful. We run our companies and organizations off of stories; the past, the current, the future, successes, challenges and people who we hold up as examples. The stories we also tell to ourselves are just powerful. I hear people say to themselves when they make a mistake, “That was great, stupid!”.  That’s not a great narrative to encourage ourselves, especially in a time when we are more on our own than we can remember.  Now is the time to create a narrative for the future that others will be inspired and excited to hear and follow. Yes, I know the future seems way too uncertain to do that planning, but like any great storyboard there is the happily living ever after ending, the we are still where we are ending, and the disaster ending.  What story can we build for each, so we are ready for not if, but when.

I can be honest with you, cause I know you won’t tell anyone, :).  For the past few nights my dreams have been that I have gotten Covid-19.  On different nights it’s ranged from all good and I’m one of the fortunate ones to recover quickly and go on about life, to the other extreme that I didn’t make it.  Fortunately, when I wake up, I am still healthy, but for a moment it is still scary. So, that is when I turn to God once again with this Psalm; “My health may fail, and my spirit may grow weak, but God remains the strength of my heart;
he is mine forever.” That is God’s story and it is His narrative that can keep us strong in times like these. If you are telling yourself a worrisome or fearful story,for any reason, then join me in replacing it with His story, which so much better than anything we could ever imagine.

Reference: Psalm 73:26 (New Living Translation)