Jonathan Reckford jokes that before he became CEO of Habitat for Humanity International he couldn’t really keep a job.

In the two decades after he graduated from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Reckford had been a financial analyst at Goldman Sachs, coach of the Korean rowing team for the 1988 Olympics, and held executive and managerial positions at Marriott, Disney and Best Buy. He was executive pastor at Christ Presbyterian Church near Minneapolis, when he was recruited to lead Habitat in 2005.

What Reckford did not expect was how the twin disasters of the Indian Ocean tsunami and Hurricane Katrina would make the global housing nonprofit expand its work so quickly. Or that they would make building affordable housing such a major priority.

“It was an inflection poin

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