Meet Jonathan T.M. Reckford
A Biographical Sketch
With professional experience ranging from Wall Street to corporate suite to church ministry, and a global view shaped by living, traveling and doing missions work internationally, Jonathan T.M. Reckford brings to his role as chief executive officer of Habitat for Humanity International a well mixed blend of passion for serving those in need and the business skills required to lead a international nonprofit organization that continually earns its supporters' trust and respect.
Of his commitment to heed Christ's call to serve the poor and forgotten, Reckford says his motivation is best summed up by the desire to live out the great commandment, expressed by the prophet Micah as a call to "act justly, love mercy and walk humbly with your God." (Micah 6:8)
Additionally, he says, "I feel unreasonably blessed and, with that, a responsibility to be a good steward of the gifts God has entrusted to me."
A native of North Carolina, Reckford earned his undergraduate degree in political science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He earned an MBA, with a certificate in public and nonprofit management, from Stanford University Graduate School of Business in Palo Alto, Calif.
Throughout his life, Reckford's choices have reflected a mix of activities involving head, heart and helping hand. As part of a leadership development program during undergraduate days, he spent summers being introduced to a variety of careers and settings. One summer, he completed Outward Bound School, another summer he worked for a municipal police force, another he spent working with Pan American Airways. A fourth summer, he worked in the American Bar Association's dispute resolution section and completed ABA mediation training.
Reckford began his professional career as a financial analyst from 1984-86 at Goldman, Sachs & Co. in New York. Regularly logging 80 hours a week at work, he found the position intellectually and professionally stimulating, but ultimately determined that investment banking was not the career he wanted to pursue.
Perhaps, he says, the decision had to do with living in Times Square that year and walking by scores of street people on his way to the subway each morning.
"The magnitude of the misery was overwhelming," he recalls, particularly against the backdrop of the megadeals he was working on in the business world, and the lessons he had taken to heart growing up in a family long involved in justice issues and civil rights work. His parents were active in the civil rights struggle in North Carolina and his grandmother, the late New Jersey congresswoman Millicent Fenwick, was widely known for her commitment to justice issues, including drafting the legislation that resulted in formation of the Helsinki Commission to monitor compliance with the Helsinki accord on human rights.
Not sure what his next career step should be, but sensing the need to get perspective, Reckford applied for, and received, a Henry Luce Foundation Scholarship, a program designed to give future leaders the opportunity to live and work for a year in Asia. As a Luce Scholar, he worked for the Olympic Organizing Committee in Seoul, Korea, to prepare for the 1988 Olympic Games. When his experience in competitive rowing was discovered, he also was asked to coach the Korean national rowing team. He worked for the Olympic committee during the day, coached in the late afternoon, and lived in the Olympic village with 300 Korean coaches and athletes.
It was, says Reckford, "an immersion experience in international living."
It also was during that year that his serious faith journey began. While he characterizes himself as a Christian in name before that time, it was in Korea that he began meeting weekly with a friend, a Baptist minister, to explore issues of faith in depth. They spent each Monday evening, Reckford explains, "walking through the Bible," an exploration that led to a decision to begin a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
"That was in March of '87," he says, "and nothing has been the same since."
At the conclusion of his Olympic duties, and following an eye-opening, three-month journey through Southeast Asia, Reckford returned to the United States and began work on his MBA degree at Stanford. While he was acquiring the skills needed to succeed in the business world, a professor's words struck home with him: "The same skills that will make you a success in the for-profit world also are desperately needed in the not-for-profit world."
With that idea firmly planted in his mind, and degree in hand, he set off to ply his skills in the for-profit world with the goal "some day" of using the business experience acquired there to move to the nonprofit arena.
His immediate goal, though, was landing a position in Washington, D.C., where his soon-to-be fiancee Ashley was practicing law. Friends from undergraduate days in North Carolina, they had stayed in touch during his various moves and while she attended law school at the University of Georgia. His search led him to the Marriott Corp. and a position as manager of service group strategy and business development.
Now recently married, Reckford's next career stop was the Walt Disney Co. in Orlando, Fla. He served as manager of business planning from 1991-92; as marketing manager for Disney Vacation Club in 1993; as director of finance and business planning, Disney's America, in 1994; and as director of business planning and development for Disney Design and Development from 1994-95.
In 1995, he joined Circuit City Stores Inc., based in Richmond, Va., as vice president, earning a promotion to senior vice president for corporate planning and communications in 1997. Two years later, he was recruited to become president of stores for Musicland. In that position, he led 1,330 Sam Goody, Suncoast Motion Picture Co., Media Play and On Cue stores, delivering $1.9 billion in sales and record earnings for the company.
When Musicland was acquired by Best Buy Inc. in 2001, Reckford helped lead the division through the integration process and strategic brand repositioning. But he began thinking it might be time to take what he had learned in the business world to the not-for-profit world.
"There was a growing sense of personal calling to start working on something more mission-related, a call that I needed to do more about serving the least, the lost and the left out," he recalls of that time. His response included a mission trip to India, a journey that reignited his passion for social justice work.
Active in local faith communities wherever he had lived, Reckford had found an avocation helping to coach priests and pastors in how to deal with the management side of church life. As he prayed and went through a period of discernment about what he should be doing next in life, it was natural that he would continue active volunteering with his church, Christ Presbyterian in Edina, Minn.
Eventually, in 2003, that volunteer service turned into full-time ministry as executive pastor of the 4,300-member church, leading planning and execution of ministry through a 70-member staff. The church has been recognized as a pioneer in partnering with NGOs to combat AIDS in Uganda and is active in supporting a wide variety of cross-cultural missions locally and internationally—support, Reckford explains, that has given him the opportunity to immerse himself in the justice issues that so long have tugged at his heart.
As much as he has enjoyed and been challenged by his work with the church, he says, "God has this way of showing up at unexpected times with surprises." This time, the surprise was a call informing him of Habitat for Humanity's search for a CEO.
A longtime admirer of Habitat's "hand up rather than a handout" in helping low-income families build and buy homes—an "empowering approach to ministry"—Reckford believed that the organization was a good fit with his personal faith and values, and that his business career had honed the skills needed to lead a nonprofit with excellence.
"The chance to serve Habitat combines many of the things I am most passionate about, with the potential to put my skills and gifts to use for a greater purpose," said Reckford. "This is the kind of role I have been preparing for my entire career."
He was unanimously elected chief executive officer by the International Board of Directors of Habitat for Humanity on Aug. 4.
Reckford and his wife Ashley, who grew up in Albany, Ga., have three children, ages 10, 8 and 5. In addition to volunteer work in his local community and mission activities through his church, Reckford serves on the board of directors for Opportunity International, a micro-lending organization serving the poorest of the poor.
