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 2623: The Big Talk

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“Let us think of ways to motivate one another to acts of love and good works”

I was asked to give a commencement speech at Hanover College, which I did last Saturday. I felt it went well (you will have to tell me. You can hear it here starting at 51:20). What I found most interesting about the whole experience was how all-consuming mentally it was to prepare and ultimately deliver the talk.  As you can tell from my lackluster postings of purposed worKING during the last few weeks, all I could really think about was this one talk.  It’s interesting to me as I often do speaking engagements and am able to multi-task, but in this case, I could only focus on one thing.  It reminds me that sometimes we will ask people within our companies to make a big presentation but we don’t necessarily consider that we also ask them to do their daily work and that it might just be too much, later wondering why their presentation or their other work wasn’t up to snuff.  Sometimes, we just have to recognize that one thing done well, might be enough.

We will start this short work week with lots to do and try to get five days all in four. As we do, we can remember that trying to do it all is sometimes way too much.  So, let’s consider that we are not alone and that the others around us are experiencing the same.  What can we do to bring God’s message them today?  We can be motivators and encouraging and keep them going with good words and good deeds.  Those little words and efforts could lead to a big talk when we can tell them why we do what we do.

Reference: Hebrews 10:24 (New Living Translation)