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 2758: Curiosity

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“This is amazing,” Moses said to himself. “Why isn’t that bush burning up? I must go see it.”

I’ve always been curious by nature. I’ve been told more than once that “curiosity killed the cat.” I get that, but incurious cats might just starve.  Curiosity, if not the mother of invention (that is necessity) it has to be at least an aunt. I look a the great inventors and innovators of our history and there can be no doubt that they started with being curious about what could be different or better.  When we go to hire someone new, we would benefit from asking them what they are curious about?  If not much, then don’t expect initiative or new ideas.  I’ll take the curious cat over the incurious any time.

What if Moses hadn’t been curious about the bush that wouldn’t stop burning?  I’d have loved to have been there to see how that played out.  How long did he watch the bush burning before he realized, this is really odd, that bush doesn’t stop burning.  But, also imagine had he said to himself, “I don’t have time to check that out, I have to get back down this mountain”.  God may be putting our own personal version of a burning bush right in front of us, just trying to spark our curiosity.  Maybe we have one of those right now that we just need to be curious about to learn more, dig a little deeper, make a move towards in order to see what God has burning for us.

Reference: Exodus 3:3 (New Living Translation)