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 2705: Running Scared Or Running Sacred?

“Stay on the path that the Lord your God has commanded you to follow.”

In keeping with the running metaphor (the NYC Marathon did kick the week off after all), I have seen more than one company and business during the last few weeks who are running scared. The We Work IPO collapse, along with a few others have investors scratching their heads about a number of upcoming IPOs.  We’ve even seen others who have announced that they are pulling back before trying.  Watching some investors who are now worried about their next round of funding or having to pivot their businesses to attract new investors, has begun to feel like what occurred in late 2007/2008.  I’m not predicting or saying that we are going into a different cycle, but it is important that when we have moments like this that we don’t begin to run scared and make quick decisions that we might come back to regret. So, if it feels like a scary time, that is the time to slow down and make sure that our heads are clear.

At some point we all will run scared and it is then that we need to call on Christ to keep us in a safe place. When we start to run scared, if we just reorient where we place the “C” in our lives we can go from running scared to running sacred.  Running sacred is to be assured and confident that whatever is to come that we will come out on the other end on the path of God’s will, which as we know, is always good for us.

Reference: Deuteronomy 5:33 (New Living Translation)