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 2431: Appreciating Differences

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“John’s clothes were woven from coarse camel hair, and he wore a leather belt around his waist. For food he ate locusts and wild honey.”

We speak and read a lot about the desire and need for inclusive thinking and diversity in our workplaces.  There are lots of great reasons for both, and one of the best reasons is the positive business results that are driven from having broad experiences based thinking and different points of view on everything we do.  The business environment is always changing and if we are not willing to accept new and “different than us” thinking and people, then we run the high risk of missing out on what will be new and needed.

Jesus’s model of acceptance of team diversity might be as good as it gets.  Yes, we all have studied and know the differences in the Disciples and their backgrounds, but I’d not recognized an even better example until this past weekend in church when the teaching was on John the Baptist.  It’s right there in front of us that John the Baptist lived in the woods eating locusts and honey.  But, it takes some imagining to see in our mind’s eye that the person who lives in the woods wearing camel woven clothes would not have been someone who everyone else would have looked towards and said, “Hey, there’s someone normal that fits right in with the rest of us.” John was pretty different from the start and he was who Jesus asked to baptize Him.  Jesus shows us from the beginning of His ministry the openness and appreciation to those who are different and run counter to the rest.  He created a special place for those who were diverse and so should we.

Reference: Matthew 3:4 (New Living Translation)