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 3K307: Flying In Circles

“Look straight ahead, and fix your eyes on what lies before you.”

In aviation, flying in circles isn’t a standard.  When we have to circle an airport to land it means traffic, weather or something out of the ordinary. SpaceX’s launch of their Starship rocket ended up exploding but not after making multiple circles in the air as it didn’t receive the self-destruction command. Ironically, they are now thinking that this malfunction might have been caused by debris that did damage to the rocket from the launchpad.  This made me think that many of the times that we feel like we are flying (or running) in circles is because we didn’t get something right at the beginning.  The unintended consequences of what happens at the launch of anything could get us in a place and a state where we don’t want to be.  It’s a good reminder for all of us to take the extra time in planning and preparing to see if we can’t see a straight line through to success.

God doesn’t want us to run (or fly) in circles.  He gives us a direct and straight line to Him.  But, why does it many times feel like we could be going in circles with our faith?  I would say that it is when we get distracted or lose the sight of where we should be going that we can end up finding our way back to where we started and that can happen over and over again if we are not careful. The answer is if we truly we follow his Words to fix our gaze on Him then we can progress forward in our lives without the worry of ending up going in circles.

Proverbs 4:25 (New Living Translation)