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 2445: Gatekeepers

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“They would spend the night around the house of God, since it was their duty to guard it and to open the gates every morning.”

At this point, it has become more obvious that the pitchfork holders are marching for the gates against the advancement of technology companies. On one hand it hurts to see this as technology has done so much for where we are today, but the unintended consequences have not been well-managed and we now sit in this place of distrust and backlash.  This likely will not get better and not with the coming implementations of further automation, robotics, machine learning and artificial intelligence.  I was listening to a conversation about a company that was building “lights out” factories and how close they were to having no humans on the manufacturing or assembly floors.  As I have always said, and will continue to say, technology has been good for us and will not replace, but add new jobs and professions that we can’t yet imagine, but we do need better gatekeepers who feel the responsibility for the generations to come to protect us from the fallout that we also cannot yet forecast or imagine.

In 1 Chronicles we are taught of the gatekeepers who guarded the House of the Lord. They are called out as special and important.  They worked all hours, never leaving any entrance unguarded. But, not only did they do what we normally would conjure up as the job of a gatekeeper; to guard and keep people out, but we are told that they also had the responsibility to open up the gates each morning.  As I read this, I wondered if this really wasn’t the most important part of their job? A gate closed to the House of the Lord, is a barrier to God and worse, the denial of access to someone who is seeking to worship the Lord or come to Him in need. And, so this is where we come in. Are we also not gatekeepers for Christ in our workplaces? Is it possible that we have been placed where we are today to be there to open up the gates for others to Him each and every morning? Quite possible indeed!

Reference: 1 Chronicles 9:27 (New Living Translation)