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 3K281: Leaving In 2D

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“And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, who will never leave you.”

Like it or not, we are still stuck on Zoom for some meetings and interactions, making us all live in 2-D.  We’ve been doing this a lot for the last three years and while I am really glad we had it during those pandemic days today I begin to dread being on a Zoom.  (Yes, I have Zoom fatigue. Do you?) Yesterday, I was on a Zoom with a Head of HR who was taking me through a recent set of layoff that they had to do and she was discussing how hard it was to be compassionate and attuned to the emotions and needs of their employees over Zoom.  It reminded me of one of the things I really dislike about Zoom (or any video teleconference) which is that moment of “goodbye”.  When we hit that “Leave” or “End Meeting for All” button it feels like we are hanging up on someone too abruptly.  By now, Zoom could have softened the message and given us options on what we want our invitees to see as we hang up.  Maybe the button should be, “Goodbye for Now”, or “Bye and Have a Great Day”, or just “Goodbye” instead of “Leave”.  No one wants to just leave someone hanging and in 2-D it even feel worse.  It’s a good thing for us to think about that when we sign-off from any conversation, in any medium, we want to be sure that have given ample space and time to say an authentic goodbye.

Jesus left His Disciples and followers but as He did he assured them that He would not leave them, or us alone.  It isn’t God’s way to just leave us.  What He did instead, he left us with another dimension to our faith, the Holy Spirit to be with us at all times.  I am also always amazed at how God’s Word can come alive for us when we dig in.  He doesn’t leave us and He certainly is far more than the dimensions that we can understand.

Reference: John 14:6 (New Living Translation)