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 2329: Finish? I’m Just Starting!

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“This is what the Lord of Heaven’s Armies says: Be strong and finish the task! Ever since the laying of the foundation of the Temple of the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, you have heard what the prophets have been saying about completing the building.“

Before the holidays I was working with an Executive Director on an event that will be happening later this month in New York City during GRAMMY week. As we were finishing the brainstorming call, he asked what the next step should be?  I suggested that he write the invitation like he wants the event to be envisioned and completed, that way we just plan to what the invitation states.  And, likely the event will happen that way because he knows where he wants to finish, before he even starts.  I often encourage this approach.  Write the magazine article now for what we want to happen five years from now.  If we start with the finish, we can back our way into where we should start.

God challenged generations of His people to complete the building of the Temple.  All of this was predicated on their faithfulness and commitment to Him first and foremost, not their construction skills. The Temple was a building. The process was the building of them as His followers.  We now know that the building itself was to never be the thing to be revered, we know that God sent Jesus as the completion of His reign and that we are to look to Him now as the Temple completed.  However, one thing remains the same for us as it was with the Jewish people, it is our faith and commitment to serve and follow Him that matters.  Today, we are all building “something” and we may feel called by God to do so as part of our work.  Regardless if feeling called or not, He is imploring us to finish whatever it is we start as if we are finishing for Him.

Reference: Zechariah 8:9 (New Living Translation)