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 2585: Putting The Band Back Together

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“Barnabas agreed and wanted to take along John Mark.”

I’m working with a new startup that I am so excited about.  It will soon be announced and come out of stealth mode. It is something I’ve been wanting to see tackled for a long time.  So, it’s all good and energizing.  But, what is best of all is that there is a group of us who have known each other for a long time, some of us worked together back last century and the new people in are connected to one of us in some similar way.  What it feels like is that we’ve brought the band back together.  I’ve been catching up on the Oscar nominations and saw “Bohemian Rhapsody”.  When Queen broke up and then came back together for the Live Aid concert (yes, I remember watching it live) it was as if they never missed a beat or a day together.  If you notice in the movie they referred to themselves as a family first and a band second. There is a lesson in there that those who consider themselves family and friends first become the band that might not be able to be broken.  And when they do, if they come back together, then they pick the beat right up.  It should make us evaluate are we trying to build bands or something deeper that then turns into the band?

Barnabas was ready to go with Paul and he wanted to bring John Mark along.  He was putting the band back together.  Paul didn’t end up seeing it the same way, but Barnabas saw past whatever lack of loyalty that Paul felt and paired back up with John Mark and went on to do amazing things.  We have brothers and sisters in the Lord who we work with.  We won’t always see eye to eye and we might go through phases of not getting along or working as closely, but if we allow God to move first within us, then we will always come back to a beat that is within us that wants to have the band play for glory of God.  So, let’s stay close to our sisters and brothers today as we go through our work time.  God wants to do something amazing with you and them.

Reference: Acts 15:37 (New Living Translation)