Hey, everybody, it's Kai.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Corner Office podcast.

This month on the pod, all my guests are going to be people running nonprofits and charities.

Last week, we talked with the co-presidents of baby-to-baby.

They helped get baby supplies and kids supplies to families.

Today we have Jonathan

Reckford. He's the CEO of Habitat for Humanity, or Habitat as it's called. It's one of the

most well-known nonprofits out there fueled by the hard work and sweat equity of

volunteers around the world building homes for families who need them. It's not always

easy to do this work with all that's going on with the affordable

housing crisis.

I spoke with Mr. Reckford about the ways that Habitat is trying to help.

And his new book, Our Better Angels, is filled with the lessons he has learned on the job

running a global non-profits.

So here he is, Jonathan Reckford.

We're expecting you.

Won't you have a seat? Ready to go to work? Jonathan Reckford. We're expecting you. Won't you have a seat? Ready to go to work? Jonathan Reckford, welcome to the program. Thanks, Kai. Great to be with you. I think there are some things we need to clear up, first of all, about your business, your company, and how you guys work. I think probably everybody or many people think you just build houses and give them away. That is not, in fact, the case. That is true. That's one of the biggest myths about Habitat. In fact, we're best known for two things that turn out not to be true. First, that we give away houses. We don't. We actually sell them to families who put in hundreds of hours of sweat equity, helping build their homes and their neighbor's homes, and then they pay back an affordable mortgage, and we recycle those funds back into the same communities.

The other is that President Carter started and runs habitat, which is also not true, though he certainly put us on the map.

Yeah, for sure, and we'll get back to the former president in a minute.

But a word here about you, just ticking through your resume, Goldman Sachs, Marriott, the Walt Disney Corporation, Circuit City, how did you wind up running a nonprofit that does global work like you do?

You know, I think God has a sense of humor. My career in some ways never made complete sense. Great opportunities

just kept coming along. But I had always planned on trying to learn in the private sector and then

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