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 2526: Shredded

“The Lord is close to the brokenhearted; he rescues those whose spirits are crushed.”

How about the story of Banksy’s “Girl With Red Balloon” painting that upon its auction sale of $1.4MM automatically shredded itself (or at least 1/2 of itself).  A ploy by someone for sure.  To make the painting more valuable?  Possibly as anyone in the art world will forever recognize the only one of this Banksy painting to have been shredded. I haven’t read anything about the buyer being unhappy.  I think she/he is now ecstatic because this piece of art now has an experience and story surrounding it. It’s a good lesson for us.  Our products and services will always be more valuable if someone can tell a story about the uniqueness of what they have received.

This is God’s story too for us.  There aren’t many stretches of time that we won’t feel like we have been beaten down, depressed, exhausted and “shredded” by people and events that are outside of our control. And like the Banksy painting event, when we least expect it.  But, what is different is that God can always put us back together and in that restoration, we also become more valuable to Him and our experience and story becomes something that He can use to expand His Kingdom.

Reference:  Psalm 34:18 (New Living Translation)