Goodwill’s CEO on Christian Leadership and the Fight for Opportunity

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Collin Hansen
It’s amazing how often a higher calling is buried by problems, smallness and self interest is the leaders job to lift the sights of an organization to a higher place. People want to be part of something great, and they will rise to the occasion if given the chance, and it’s the leaders job to help lift them to that place. That quote is from a recent talk delivered by Steve Preston, who is President and CEO of Goodwill Industries International, which is the largest nonprofit workforce developer in North America. I connected with Steve a few years ago and got to know him better last year, as TGC was launching the Keller Center for Cultural apologetics. Now, Steve is an unassuming man, but I need to make him a bit uncomfortable. By running through his resume. He served as the 14th secretary of the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. That was from 2008 to 2009. And the 22nd, Administrator of the US Small Business Administration, from 2006 until his appointment as HUD secretary. I know he’d wanted me to point out that he before entering public service, Steve spent nearly 25 years in the private sector. But Steve knows that I like him mainly because he’s a Northwestern University graduate and a regular listener of gospel bound. Now, in all seriousness, I could tell you stories about Steve’s involvement behind the scenes with reformed University fellowship, various church plants, the board of Wheaton College and even the northwestern administration. I met Steve and his wife Molly while working on my book about Timothy Keller. Preston’s were early members at Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York and Steve’s comments for that book stood out to me before I learned anything or knew anything about his background. Steve’s work experience shows how strong leaders break the chain of problems from advancing beyond them. Here’s a line from one of his talks that I really like, quote, so many times larger crises are averted, because good leaders have taken a stand, done the right thing, and be willing to stand tall when others were not. Because they held fast to what they believed was right. Now, this interview, we’re going to learn more about that history. And we’ll talk about Goodwill, which I’m sure almost all of you know from it’s 3300 stores where we donate and shop. I’ve told Steve that my late grandmother might have been Goodwill’s biggest fan. I’m not sure whether she donated or purchased more. But now that I think about it, definitely she purchased more. For nearly 120 years, Goodwill has recruited trained and placed employees who otherwise may have been trapped in poverty without meaningful work that blesses their neighbors. And so Steve Preston joins me now and gospel bound to share more about his journey, how his faith in God carries him through various decisions and leadership challenges. Steve, welcome to gospel bound.

Steve Preston
Thank you. I’m honored to be with you. I feel a little luck, like I snuck in through the side door. I haven’t written a book. I have a little bit of impostor syndrome here. We

Collin Hansen
wouldn’t it’s gonna be a wonderful, Steve, it’s going to be great. Well, let’s just start. Let’s just start from, start with your story. Start from the beginning. How did you come to faith in Jesus Christ?

Steve Preston
Yes, I did not grew up in a Christian family. And I spent the summer as a 12 year old, away with relatives on my father’s side, they were very strong Christians. And they really had this faith that really wrapped them. And all they did. They grew up very poor. They grew up in the coal mines. And they and they really clung to their faith throughout life. And so being in that environment with them for a summer, I really came to understand what that faith looked like up close, as well as I could at that age. And I just really never doubted it after that. It was that summer that I that I accepted Christ. And really, my my life was changed immediately and forever as a result.

Collin Hansen
Oh, how did your family respond to that? Was this a positive thing from their perspective and negative thing? Confusion? How did they respond?

Steve Preston
Kind of all those things? D. Came home. It was sort of a range of going from a different style, right rejection, so I had older brothers. They were both teenagers. Let’s say they were fully embracing their adolescence. And I had a couple of sisters that were much younger than me. And so it really wasn’t on their radar screen. But my father, who had come had grown in that faith tradition, it fully rejected it. And it actually wasn’t until his death a couple of months ago that I came to understand that his rejection was based on the teaching that his salvation was not secure. And so he never felt like he could live in calm. financed, and he finally fully rejected it. And now thankfully, many years after that, he came to a fuller understanding of the veracity of God’s grace through all things. And he came back to the faith. But in my situation, I just say my life changed immediately. And I grew up in kind of a rough and tumble setting, I knew, I knew a lot of things and did a lot of things as a 12 year old that I still can’t quite believe. And I was sort of, you know, following the path that had been set before me. And, but but when I came back home, I stepped back from a lot of the friends I had, I found a church, I found a youth group. And that really put me on a very different path. And I do recall, as much as possible at that age, really developing a very different vision for my life. And once I got my driver’s license, I started taking my sisters to church, and they came to faith, which was really special. But when I was in my senior year in college, and looking forward to going to school, I just felt this tremendous burden that, you know, my older brothers and my parents were still not had not accepted Christ, I sort of felt that burden was on me. And toward the end of my senior year, my mother said, you know, your father and I realize what a good influence this has been on your life. And, and we don’t want your your sisters to stop going to church. So we’re going to start taking them to church when you go to college. And all I can say is, within a year of my going to college, my one brother would come to Christ, through friends in the military, ultimately, he became the pastor, my father came to Christ, I became an elder in the church. And my, my brother came back and evangelize my other brother and my mother. And so which, which, if you just sort of know that the Pre and Post story on him was was truly miraculous. And it was really the first really powerful example in my life, of seeing that God’s God’s ways were are greater than mine. And then he’s just deeply worthy of our trust. And so it put me in, I think, in a different place of confidence in my faith, and what was possible.

Collin Hansen
connect us from there, to how you end up in New York, what happens in the middle, what takes you to New York from this rough and tumble background?

Steve Preston
Well, I, you know, I was a good student, I had been applying myself that was that was part of the change life. And and I didn’t really know where I was going to college, my parents hadn’t gone to college. In fact, my father hadn’t graduated high school. And I got a little postcard from Northwestern. And I didn’t I lived 100 miles away, I didn’t even know what it was. And the deeper I looked into it, the more I realized that that might be a good opportunity. And, you know, one thing led to another, I went there, and then after graduating a firm in Chicago, offered to put me through University Chicago, to get an MBA. And at age 25, I was a newly minted MBA in finance, I became an investment banker at a major Wall Street investment bank. I say it that way, because it sounds better than saying Lehman Brothers now. Pretty good. While I, you know, I tried to you know, no brand names anymore. But it was really it was, it was sort of a striking trajectory for me, because, you know, I was a, I was 25 years old, working in Hong Kong on a big assignment, and my father was unemployed, and with, you know, experiencing, you know, significant financial challenges, and I sort of realized that God had put me in a fundamentally different place and on a fundamentally different path, the one that the one I’d come from, and part of part of what I was dealing with was understanding what that really meant for me. The other part of that is I was a guy in my 20s. In New York City, I didn’t have deep theological roots. I was looking for a strong faith community. But I certainly had one foot kind of firmly planted in the scene of New York in the 1980s. And, and so I, you know, I visited a number of churches that were are actually attended a couple that were actually very focused on evangelism. But you know, New York in the 1980s was a very tough place. And I just felt this intense need for the church to be serving the city in ways that a lot of the churches I was attending word, and to be caring about the deepest human needs in the city, and then other churches that I’d looked into and one that I attended ultimately, really hard to heart for people in need, but But they lacked fidelity to many of the tenants of our faith. And it left me feeling like I just, I wasn’t really on solid ground, like they were caring about things that were important, but but the rock solid foundation wasn’t there. And so friend urged me to try out a brand new church that was just starting with this great pastor. It was Tim Keller. And so I visited and I never, I never left, I was hooked after the first service. Tim had diagnosed the condition of the New York young professional, instead of the fineness of our fixations, that, you know, the things that were driving us are counterfeit gods, as he would later write about. And he pointed us to, you know, really what was authentic, in what was eternal. And you also love the city. And he believed in the importance of Christians serving in the city. And all of that was like, wrapped in this strong foundation of theology. So for me, so much came together for me, in terms of making sense of my faith and making real in my life and beginning to see a vision for what God was calling me to be and to do in my life. And it put me in a different place in a fundamentally different pathway. Because of that experience.

Collin Hansen
One of the things I loved most working on the book about Tim was talking to a lot of people from over the years at Redeemer, again, starting with starting with you guys. But it was so fun to think about what Tim set out, Tim and Kathy set out to do in New York, what they prayed to see. And to see the fruit of that. And I think about I think about Bob and Heidi Jenkins and I think about them living on the Upper East Side, and all the plans to reach people in the Upper East Side them to come into faith, I think about the way they anticipated all these people who would be moving into the city to take these jobs and who would be there to shepherd them. And who would be there to help them to see that God had a plan for them to serve the city, and not just to take from the city, but to truly be planted there and to care for their neighbors. I’m wondering, Steve, where did you? How did you develop I mean that that background, except for parts of your childhood, I wouldn’t say that’s a natural avenue toward sensing a strong call to serve the poor. I’m just wondering how many investment banking associates the 1980s spent their weekends volunteering with the poor, or that come from? Well, I

Steve Preston
have to let me just start off by telling you a funny little story, how many investment bankers, so I was actively recruiting, recruiting other young professionals to serve on the weekends, in a particular tutoring program, the program had gotten a hold of a cheap baby blue van. And I would pick up people on a couple of different street corners. And once again, New York was it was a different place in the ad and I would sort of drive this baby blue van right through Harlem and through the potholes, and double parked cars, church to tutor and so they got a hold, they got the full the full experience in their volunteer activities. And by the way, I loved driving in New York and but most people didn’t love driving with. So I wanted to give him I wanted to give make sure it was worth their time. I know for me, Colin, it started out really just with a love for children and, and just a sense of burden for their circumstances. And, and living in New York and having a sense of the environment that so many children were growing up and I just I just wanted to be somebody in their lives, that was a positive force, and hopefully help them point to something different, you know, and by the way, you know, for me spending time with with with kids was just such a sweet part of my life back then, because I was I was I was just running so hard in my work all the time. And so that this was sort of a pocket of, of sweetness that I just looked forward to so much. But then I realized that they were teaching me, right, I grew my understanding of what their lives look like, in all of the brokenness that surrounded them in so many reflections, right, their families, their schools, the violence around them, the the stories people told them, and all of those influences were shaping. And so that time was very formative for me and helping me understand how so many people end up on those difficult paths. And it was during that time that I started mentoring a teenager and it was through him that that understanding really deepened very significantly, you know, they it was somebody who had had sort of very troubled pathway I was asked to begin spending time with him. He, you know, met me with a lot of suspicion And it was a long road. But ultimately, we really became a part of each other’s lives. And I remember telling him once, look, because I knew I knew what, where things could potentially go with him. And I said, you know, before you ever do anything stupid, you come straight to me. We’re just like, don’t make the bad decision. Just come to me. That’s that, that that’s, that’s that’s the that’s the hatch, right? And, and so, you know, you’ve met my wife, Molly. And I had, I think, six weeks we had dinner, I put her in a taxi, and I was walking home. And sure enough, I saw him sitting on my stoop. I went up to him, I said, you know what’s going on. And he said, Look, I’ve been kicked out of my home, he was living with his mother. He said, I can’t go back, I have a standing offer to sell drugs in the village. And you told me to come to you. And here I am. And so as only sort of a single guy without a lot of judgment would do. I said, Sure. We’ll figure this out together. And, and I had a chance to listen to how he thought, and what he faced every day, and what his assumptions were about me and about other things. And people like him, in situations like that learn to negotiate their way through the world, based on the world they’re in. You know, that might was I mentioned before, it might be poverty, or violence or abuse, certainly poor education, no understanding of what the opportunities are outside of them. And so when we, when we work with people who who find, you know, who are in difficult situations, we need to understand where they’ve come from. And one of the things I learned was through him was at a relatively early age, because of all of those influences. His wiring had become pretty formed. And it becomes increasingly formed through adolescence and adulthood. And I saw what it would take to the degree that I could, what it would take to disentangle that wiring for him to be able to move forward and how difficult that was even at a young age. But he also saw the tremendous potential inside of him. And so when we, when we look at people that we’re trying to help, especially people that have been on this pathway for a while and have had sort of compounded challenges, we need to see the entire need, that presents itself and how to work through it. And then column when I went to HUD, which is probably 15 years later, HUDs, the agency that deals more with poverty issues, really than any of the other federal agencies, I felt like I saw what had become of those kids that didn’t make it out. That didn’t move on. And eventually, I think that was the big reason that God put upon my heart, the need to serve adults, with the kinds of challenges that we see throughout our country.

Collin Hansen
Now, these days, when you start talking about a lot of these a lot of these challenges related to poverty, urban development, you quickly become entangled in various theoretical frameworks surrounding race, justice, poverty, how do we get focused and stay focused on meeting those tangible needs? Without getting sidetracked? I mean, some of those conversations can be held healthy and helpful. But many times it seems as though that’s what people want to do is have that debate, and not help the actual people in front of them, and their neighborhoods, their cities.

Steve Preston
Yeah, and I do agree that thoughtful investigation of those types of issues are is important for policy solutions and to deal with bigger issues. But so much of that discussion has become weaponized. And I get very concerned that that fight is diverting our focus away in our hearts away from the urgent call to serve individuals with deep needs that are suffering all around us every day, and people that we need to stand alongside. I just feel like there are so many people in society that are on the outside looking in. And they’re not able to benefit from from the riches of our society, which are vast, by the way, or as a lot of people like to say the promise of America, right. And there are a lot of reasons for that. And I think, to address this bigger issue, we need to face the truth with respect to the depth of the problem, because it is deep and complicated. And it derives from some of the things I just talked about. But I also think we have to be able to believe that there’s enormous value to every one of us, not just those people that every one of us in addressing those problems. And I think we need to go forward with the knowledge and the belief that If we do the hard work to move forward, we can be successful. And as Christians, you know, every human being we know every human being is an image bearer of God. People are born with incredible potential, but for various reasons that potential goes under develop. You know, I heard somebody recently say potential is evenly distributed, but opportunity is not. The first thing I said, as I wish that had been my original quote. It’s so true, you know, its potential is evenly distributed talent is Hope is. But so many people have very difficult pathways, and those are often compounded over time with bad decisions and more brokenness. And in realizing that potential, turning that into a reality may be difficult, because so many issues need to be dealt with. But there is a pathway to do it. And I believe specifically, and this is the work we do at Goodwill is, we believe very strongly in helping people develop that potential and eventually allowing that to help them move into gainful employment and self sufficiently in a fundamentally different life trajectory. And, and so there’s a tremendous amount of value in such Society of bridging the gap between people with life’s challenges who are unable to move forward, and a different future that includes that self sufficiency, and I believe a life of flourishing. And when you think about the value of work, obviously, we talk a lot about sort of the financial value in the the ability to take care of yourself and your family. But work also brings a place where we can, we can be productive, where we can bring our gifts and turn those into something where we can develop and grow and hopefully see a different kind of pathway for the future, where we develop in community with other people and have shared goals with them. And ultimately, that all leads, I believe, to essential human flourishing that we all experience in many ways, in part because of our work in in the populations that we serve. It’s also an essential pathway, to a sense of dignity. Now we all believe that every one of us is born with dignity as image bearers of God. And we and we have, you know, God, God, God sees in us. You know, that, you know, he ascribes us that dignity in a way, but people don’t feel it. People don’t set it in society doesn’t describe that to them. And, you know, I often say when people walk through the doors, seeking opportunity and help, we see more than they do, because they carry with themselves the knowledge and the burdens of their past and their difficulties. And we have this wonderful opportunity to help them not only see a different future, but but see a different self in in what they’re capable of doing.

Collin Hansen
Tell you what haunts me thinking about this a lot, Steve, is that in, you know, at the Keller center, we’re focused a lot on the problems of D churching. of 40 million Americans leaving the church in the last 30 years, a lot of people don’t realize that those numbers are coming mostly from the poor. They’re coming from the lower middle class, the non college educated, higher degrees of education, upward mobility in society is correlated with church attendance and church affiliation. And one of the things that we found in the in the great teacher searching study with the center was just a consistent pattern where people don’t go to church because they don’t feel as though life is working for them. Just feels as though every aspect of society something has has fallen apart. And as that happens, they fall away from the church. So church attendance and church affiliation seems correlated with people who feel though life is working well for them. But I’m haunted going back to something and I don’t remember if Tim said this. In other occasions, I know he did say in other occasions, I just remember most prominently, saying it at the message of his of his for his brother’s funeral, where he said, you know, my brother, in that case, related to his sexuality, is the kind of person who was attracted to following Jesus, the people who are the outcast, the people who are the down and out. But when I look around our churches, I don’t see a lot of those people here. So are we sure that we’re preaching the same message? The same message of hope, the same message of the gospel, the same message of radical grace? That’s what I think about a lot and that’s what I thought about with with your comments there. How do you see the church You know, relating to this work that you’re doing? Outside? What should the church know about that work?

Steve Preston
Well, excuse me, there’s a couple of things I think the church should, should should step into. We don’t often talk enough about just the incredible degree with which Christ loved the poor, and identified with the poor. You know, his first permanent job after being after being tempted, basically was about the poor and the imprisoned, right? When you when you look at Matthew, when he says, When you serve the least of these you’ve served me, I think it’s really important to think in terms of what that means we often think about the poorest people that we’ve reached down to that we deign to serve. And what Christ is saying is no, you’re not deigning to serve, I’m elevating you, you’re serving the king. Right. And, and so, so and it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s throughout the scriptures, you know, so I think the church needs to lead with just not only the call to serve the poor, but the fact that that is where the heart of Christ is, and, and in the calling is very high. And we don’t always and the other thing within that is, and I think this is this is one of the challenges we have is people don’t often identify with the humanity of the people that we’re serving the humanity of people who were little children at one point, who had hopes and dreams who are trying to do the best thing for their kids who have a real story behind it. And we don’t connect with who those people are. We think of them as being sort of other. But they’re our neighbors. They’re in our communities. And I think our church needs to envision its discussion of of its envision its its engagement, with the poor differently, as a result, and place the burden on all of our hearts, for the needs of those people have.

Collin Hansen
You you left New York worked in various roles, including CFO of a fortune 500 company. I’m wondering as we continue to progress in your story, Steve, how you ended up in government, I’ve noticed the pattern, you do not make the obvious decisions, or take the obvious next step up the corporate ladder. And when you arrived in government, it’s not like you were set up for success in that in that job. So bring us up to speed

Steve Preston
there. Yeah, yeah. And by the way, I think my reference, I meant to say, Luke, in the last answer,

Collin Hansen
I figured I figured it was.

Steve Preston
So all of that’s true. decisions I’ve made haven’t been sort of right out of the book. You know, I left Lehman, after eight years, just before the golden purse that comes with a promotion to managing director with site. I went into nonprofit after being a corporate CEO. And then, as you mentioned, I, I left a great corporate role against the advice of a lot of people I trusted to move my family to DC and take that job. But I want to say that all of those moves were based on a strong sense of calling. And in all of those moves, I was greatly blessed as a result. And so there’s, there’s, it’s a good news thing, right? It’s it’s a new thing, but with respect to the government move. So I was I was working in a large company in Chicago and a very senior role. And I had just felt a strong sense that I that God was calling me to make a different kind of impact in life. And really prayed prayed through it with Mali for a couple of years. And and I received an outreach from somebody in the administration that I had worked with previously, who said, you know, the government, the administration is looking for people who, who can run things, we have a lot of policy people, but a lot of these organizations, a lot of these agencies are large operations. And in we need people who can kind of drive them forward. So for a lot of reasons, I won’t get into all the details. But this all really seemed to make sense. Just, you know, in terms of the prayer process, we’ve been through the seeking process. And so I entered the I entered the, you know, the process to background checks and all the things you go through when you when you take on one of these roles, and I was offered an undersecretary role in the Department of Commerce, which was meaningful, very interesting to me. It was sort of just the right thing in terms of what I was hoping for, and also not terribly public because I had not been a public figure before. And then I got A call from the White House right? A couple of weeks before the announcement in the the first Kurtz out of the person’s mouth with Are you sitting down the FBI Background checks and everything and like, like what could possibly be. And he said, Don’t worry about it, he kind of laughed, he said, I just want to talk to you about something. And he said, You know, we’ve been thinking a lot about your candidacy here. And there’s a role that is very important to the President that we believe is a higher calling. And we’d like you to consider it, but you don’t have to go forward, because it’s going to be a very difficult job. And if you’re not ready for it, it’s gonna be very public, and very challenging. But let’s talk. And so it was running the SBA. And what most people don’t realize is the Small Business Administration makes loans to homeowners and business owners who’ve lost their homes or facilities, or have been badly damaged in a natural disaster. And it was many months after Hurricane Katrina, and almost none of that money had flowed into the hands of the people who needed it. And in fact, many people who had been approved to receive the loans. And so I googled the agency, and I just I realized, really what they were talking about Congress was calling for my predecessors resignation. SBA was all over the press. You know, and, and it was it, it, it sort of struck me to the core. And I went from a place of feeling like, God had given me great clarity to saying, Okay, what’s going on here? And I realized that I had been brought along to a place of saying, yes, and God was saying, Okay, now that I’ve gotten you to this place where you really say yes. And so I remember that I had been sort of given the weekend to think about it. And I remember that weekend, in Sunday school class I was in we were looking through Exodus 33. And it’s sort of Moses talking with God about the path forward with the real Israelites. He basically says, you know, don’t send me if you’re not going to, you know, teach me along the way, and if you’re not going to go with me, because, you know, people need to see that, that, you know, we need to be able to bring glory to you effectively, but, and then eventually he says, you know, and now I want you to reveal Yourself to me. And I thought to myself, like, that’s what I need to do, I need to go, I need to ask God to go with me. So that people could see why I’m here. I need people him to teach me and you know, and I need him to show me who he is in this place. And I also realized, like, like many Americans, for the last, at that point, I guess it was eight months, I’d been watching television, I’d been with reports on the golf, I wondered how I could help, you know, think I’m sitting in my living room outside of Chicago, knowing there was no answer to that. And then when I was confronted with this reality, I had to ask myself, who did i Who was I really, and I really, because a lot of people had advised me not to take the role and the risk was great. But I realized, you know, 30 years from now, do I want to be looking back in my life and saying, you know, I stayed on this great career path in my comfortable setting, and kind of did all the right things? Or do I want to be the person who took the call? And you know, I always have that picture in Isaiah six, as you know, when when Isaiah sees the glory of God, His inadequacy before God receives atonement. And then, in all of that remarkable mix, hearing God’s say, you know, you know, who will I send? Who will go for us? And of course, I use a a doesn’t ask where or how he just says, Send me, right. And so to me, that was sort of a send me moment, in one that really changed my life. So and I so I guess the real answer is I had no choice. Choice, because, you know, we’ve been praying My wife is just an incredible partner in these in these things. And, you know, we got to the point where the opportunity was in front of us, and it happened in most of these situations, perhaps not as dramatically. The other thing I have found in making a lot of big decisions, especially those career decisions, is I start out in a place with a fairly clear notion of where I’m heading. And along that journey, God changes my heart and, and he moves us me to a different place or has moved me to a different place. And ultimately, I realized that those decisions are really about taking a step toward joy and towards sitting him in my life and being able too, to experience those things?

Collin Hansen
Well, you’ve covered a little bit of my next question, which is about what it was like working for President George W. Bush. You mentioned the incredibly complicated and terrible disaster of Hurricane Katrina, with the SBA. But then, of course, you move in as a cabinet member and secretary for HUD. Now. Explain it when people think about the great difficulties of that administration, you’re thinking about three things, you’re thinking about stock market collapse, Katrina, you’re involved in both of those, suppose only the Iraq war would be the one that you were not involved in, in Afghanistan as well. But I mean, working for HUD, amid the stock market collapse, triggered by foreclosures, you sat on the five person board for TARP, the Troubled Asset Relief Program. How did you seek to continue to trust God for guidance, during that time, support the president carry out his priorities for the nation’s during some de vivre the nation during some really, really difficult times in American history?

Steve Preston
Yeah, so yeah, that’s all. So let me, let me just say, sometimes it’s easier to seek God hard when you’re making a big decision than it is to seek Him every day. And certainly through that process, and through other other very challenging situations I’ve been in, I’ve learned that the real growth in the real blessing and comes in living in God’s strength every day, when you’re in those situations and not in making sure you’re holding fast to him in that pathway. With respect to President Bush, you let me give you a little a few thoughts there. Despite what many people made to believe, he is extremely smart. He is a very quick study on complex issues. And he has a remarkable ability to get his head around something complicated. And see through solutions and pathways. He’s also very committed to people who are suffering. And he also wants to get the job done. Right. And he’s a very results oriented person. So in the Katrina situation, the job wasn’t getting done. And, and I think it was very difficult for everybody in the administration. But obviously, I think he was the he was the standard bearer there. So my marching orders were clear, right, I’d like my job was to get in there and fix it. And, and fixing it had a lot of different pieces to it. Obviously, you know, but I guess when they came in, by the time they got it, and it was 10 months after the storm, and there were 160,000 people in line to get a loan that hadn’t hadn’t arrived. SBA also had the lowest morale of any federal agency. Based on the best places to work survey, there were, you know, the publicity was horrible. I had 20 congressional hearings, in my first 15 months that Oh, drumbeat was was pretty constant. Wow. And so I needed to lead in a way with a team with with a strong team that I did have, and I’m very thankful for, to get funding into people’s hands so they could rebuild their lives and their communities in move forward, and it was very difficult going down there and seeing the continuing situation. And I we also needed to do it in a way that the people down there who are suffering felt like their government cared about them. And it was complicated, because the way that the way the support was set up, it was very impersonal. It was, you know, 800 numbers, and, you know, you know, Pio boxes and stuff, and, and they very seldom had the ability to talk to a human being that cared about them. And we changed all of that when we change the operational model. We needed to communicate publicly what we were doing, which was very important, and as a result, give people confidence in their government, and reflect the progress that the administration was making, which was very important. And I believe that an important part of our job is was to bring wholeness to the SBA organization. Because what we had is a situation where a lot of people in the organization, were there serving a mission, they were in the disaster recovery program, but effectively, the operational machinery had had almost collapsed, and they just couldn’t, couldn’t move forward. And they wanted to serve but they were losing and when in losing meant that people were hurting and they and being able to work with with that team to put them in a different place was was very important to me and what I’ve learned, one of the things I’ve learned as a leader, is my happiest places are when my team is flourish. Same team is able to do a great job. And I think that’s one of the most important things I do. So that that was what that job looked like. At HUD The role was very it was more it was more multifaceted because of the complexity of the of the crisis. And it really covered a number of areas like ensuring that capital was available for people buying homes, because the market had closed up, you know, people at risk of foreclosure could stay in their homes implementing major housing legislation that had been passed. And then and then playing a supporting role in the tarp, I have to, you know, I have to say, you know, the TARP was, was really in the hands of Secretary Paulson and Bernanke and a couple of us were in sort of supportive roles. But you’re

Collin Hansen
still you’re still there, when they learn that Citibank needs equity to survive, right? Oh,

Steve Preston
yeah, for sure. I mean, that was actually, you know, right. In the middle of my tenure. Yeah.

Collin Hansen
What is that? Like? I mean, what is that experience? Like? Well, so

Steve Preston
you know, you know, I’d worked on Wall Street, I’d worked in financial services for 10 years, I’d been a CFO, so I, you know, I had sort of lived in the financial world, right. And I was, and I knew very well, that a lack of confidence in financial institutions can be lethal. And we had just seen Lehman fall apart and go under, and other institutions that were on the brink. And so when Citibank came forward, I mean, like the oxygen left the room. And I can still, remember Secretary Paulson telling a few of this, it was terrifying. And the intention of the TARP was not to put equity in banks that detention, the TARP was to buy troubled assets from them, like mortgage securities and other things. And it’s one of the reasons I was on the board is because that was part of my domain. But it became clear that the issue was much deeper, and the largest, some of the largest banks in the world needed an equity infusion. Which was absolutely critical to bring confidence back in those markets. But but but but the reality was, and, you know, on the heels, two months, I guess this was probably two months after Lehman Brothers. The reality was, this could continue to go south very quickly, in a way that none of us really fully understood. And so that the urgency was was I mean, it was just more than code red, right? And so it was, yeah, yeah. I’m not sure how else to describe it. It was, it was an incredible moment. And thankfully, you know, we had you know, Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke, because because they were incredibly complimentary team in and really running into those places and, and making decisions.

Collin Hansen
Bring us up to date, then with goodwill, because it seems like what you do at Goodwill is such an excellent Mac, match for your everything from your family background, to your sense of calling to your work experience. And as you bring us up to date with goodwill, though, you need to explain that. I think a lot of us would hear your story, watch you talking about it. And think what a good example of what we talked about all the time integrating our faith in our work, but you don’t like that phrase. So explain what you don’t like about that phrase as you talk about how this sense of calling has really cohered. Then your leadership now at Goodwill.

Steve Preston
So yeah, so I think I was speaking on a faith and work panel. When I when I when I said that it wasn’t the most popular thing to say. And by the way, Colin, literally last night, I opened up the annual report for the gospel coalition, and I saw integration of faith and work sort of one of the tenets. At just the right time,

Collin Hansen
I’m gonna go pull it up, because I’m pretty sure Tim said that.

Steve Preston
Yeah, it’s top of mind. So my issue is this. We can’t you faith in work as separate domains that somehow need to get mushed together, right? There’s one domain, and the one domain is faith in every dimension every inch of our lives. It needs to be subsidiary to that or it’d be an outgrowth of that face. They’re all part of one domain. And I get why we say it, we say it because, you know, Christians, you know, think often think of okay, my faith is the good thing here in my in my work is kind of the heart thing that’s not faith over here. But we’re falling desperately short of where God is taking us and using us. If we think of that is a different thing. Our work needs to become our, you know, an outgrowth of our faith, our worth is of God. He’s Cree. He did good things in advance for us to do, right. And that’s why as we go into our work, we need to see all elements of it. Serve all elements of it through our faith, whether it’s how we lead the messages we give, the decisions we make, and very importantly, the relationships we have and how we treat people in our work. So that’s why that’s why I don’t love, you know, we in we live and move and have our being right, that’s, that’s also when we go to work.

Collin Hansen
It’s where we spend most of our time.

Steve Preston
It’s where we spend most of our time and also where we can have our greatest impact for him. Right, and it’s not in something over here, you know, if we’re, if we’re serving in a homeless shelter, and which, obviously, given where I sit, as, I believe, is crucially important, but then go to work and say, Okay, this is something else, we’re really missing the point. Right? And that’s why I get I get concerned with that characterization.

Collin Hansen
Yeah. So how does this all cohere? Then it goodwill? It just seems like such a good match for all these different things as if it’s what God had been preparing you to do.

Steve Preston
Yeah, so goodwill, you know, I had actually, gosh, I guess, 15 months or so before, I got the call from a recruiter for the goodwill job I’d written after a lot of prayer and reflection, a vision statement for myself for my next job. And when I got the call for Goodwill, I realized that this was my vision statement, it filled it perfectly, it was really about running an organization that provided opportunity for people in deep need to find a path forward for their benefit their families and for society. And then the other in so it was it was the mission area is is the mission area that God had put on my heart with with just a great deal of intensity. But the other part of it is I love running businesses. I mean, that’s kind of what I’ve done most of my life. I’ve been, you know, a CFO, and I’ve been the CEO of two companies. I love the stuff of business, it makes sense to me. And so at Goodwill, it’s really the combination of the two. And our model is the combination of the two, right, we have this massive network of stores and other things, other business activities, which then provide job opportunities within the stores and provide funding to run job centers and all sorts of other other relief. Now I don’t run the stores, I run a an organization that, that services, that vast network with all kinds of supports, to help them do their work more effectively. So it really comes together for me in a powerful way. And it also gives me a platform to talk about things I care deeply about that I don’t feel our society understands as, as well, as you know, well enough to really begin having the kind of impact we need. And so yeah, so it covers it covers a lot of bases for me.

Collin Hansen
What do you mean, elaborate on that last point?

Steve Preston
Well, just the conversation we’ve been having I was, let me just give you an example. I was working on a joint op ed with a very well known, another very well known company, private sector company. And I talked about, you know, how we need to help people and and it was kind of a simple thing. But I basically said, we have to make sure that people have skills for the future, right for the jobs are being created, we need to make sure that we serve their human needs along the way so they can get through that job preparation process. And thirdly, companies have to recognize people for their skills and not just hire them for degrees, but really hire hire people with, with the talent, the skills they need, rather than juries that don’t matter. And they continually ask me to take out that middle part, which is, if I’m housing insecure, I need to I need to have a place to live. If if, if I can’t pay my water bills, I need support.

If I don’t have transportation, and what they what they were basically saying is, we’ll forget about the human need piece. But we’re pretty cool with saying like given digital skills, and work with companies to give them the job. And we were gutting the whole middle of the human and what it would take for that human who’d never seen this kind of a path forward didn’t know that if it took this kind of a class, it could get them a job, didn’t have the ability to get through the process because their lives weren’t stable enough. They completely missed the person, if we’re going to dignify the person, and if we’re truly going to help them move forward in their lives, we need to look at the whole person. And I think in many ways, it’s a reflection of how God works within our lives. Right? If anyone has a new creation in Christ, he’s a new creation. The old is gone, the new has come. But you know along that, but there’s also sort of this concept of working out our salvation right and they’re all All the things that we deal with in the way God deals with, in our own lives to bring him closer to him. It’s not, there’s a similar reflection here where people need to deal with all of these things in their lives be able to be able to move forward. And if we don’t get that we miss this huge opportunity to take people from deep need help people get from deep need to great opportunity. And that’s, that’s kind of that middle piece that I’m that I’m talking about.

Collin Hansen
Last thing that I can, I mean, there’s so many encouraging thing, some of the things I’ve learned from you in the last year, so many things I learned from you just preparing for this interview. And you’re often speaking to rooms of business, nonprofit leaders, given your history, given your current role. Think of a place like the gospel coalition national conference, or the gospel coalition council meeting, or Keller Center for Cultural apologetics or fellows. If I put you in a room of those church leaders, what would you want them to know about your work and your broader, broader perspective?

Steve Preston
Well, what I would want them to know, is a lot of people like me, and a lot of people in their congregations need to be equipped. And they need to be equipped to be confident and purposeful, as people of faith serving in all the domains where we serve, or teachers, or doctors or office workers or organizational leaders or parents. And we need to be equipped, especially because our world has changed so much. And I’m not talking about technology, those things I’m talking about the fundamental assumptions that people in society have on really fundamental issues. And I’m sure you’ve seen surveys that look at, you know, where sort of the, you know, you know, 20 to 30 year olds think relative to 50 to six year olds, I don’t know, if there’s ever been a time in my understanding where the basic views of younger people and older people are so far apart. And, and and especially as people who are in leadership, or our parents, or are serving young people, knowing how to enter those places, where we’re speaking to people in ways that they can, in ways that meet them where they are. It’s so critical. And so so my my recommendation was would be to to know the world that all of us that are not in vocational ministry are operating. And think about how to equip us in those places. So that they truly are all outgrowths of our faith, and we can do it with confidence

Collin Hansen
is good. In fact, I was talking with one of our friends Catherine Alsdorf, recently about this in relation to the Keller Center for Cultural apologetics about how we can grow in that area more. And it was definitely a big part of Tim’s vision for the gospel and culture. And it’s what brought me to you. That’s why you’ve been such a tremendous encouragement and help in the last year. I do have one last question, which is a question I’ve often asked. So we’re not going to let you off the hook with books on this podcast. So Steve, what’s the last great book you’ve read?

Steve Preston
Yeah, so I recently read and then reread a novella. And you’ll be familiar with it because I remember your interview of of wordage curling theory saw Mortensen it’s a Tolstoy novella called the death of Yvonne Ilitch. And I gotta tell you, Colin, there was never a point in reading this book, right? Just didn’t feel it. And you start this book and the end of the story, which is his people finding about his death and his funeral. And it’s people that are fond of him, people that have worked with him, but every aspect of their conversation was transactional, right? Who would get a promotion because of his position, who had a raise? What’s the right thing to do at the play at the funeral to look right? And then you go to the beginning of his life, and you see the trajectory of his life and what he lives for educational and professional and social success and how he kind of lives into that. And then as his life falters, and ultimately he faces his death. He becomes very bitter and angry, but it was really at the very end when he realizes that what he lived for was was was thin it was that there that there just really wasn’t any substance to it. He actually finds peace, because he realizes at the end of his life you know, kind of kind of the truth no It comes sort of after a priest comes in and gives them a blessing. And you see this sort of sense of repentance almost in a sense of Redemption at the end. And it wasn’t long after reading that, but a friend of mine who’s very successful person, private equity, had seen somebody else in the same profession, didn’t know him well. And the guy came up to and said, Hey, I hear you’re kind of a religious guy, and I actually just lost my job and this person began weeping. And I, he told me this story, and I said, You got to give him this book. You got to give him this book, because there’s hope but you have to look where that hope is. And yeah, it was it was a powerful book.

Collin Hansen
I liked that. I liked that any Russian literature suggestions on Gospelbound are welcome.

Steve Preston
Hopefully you didn’t find my summary objectionable.

Collin Hansen
You snuck in, you snuck in. I appreciate it. Steve. My guest this week on gospel bounce. Steve Preston, President and CEO of Goodwill Industries International. Steve, thanks for your your your teaching here. Thank you for your example. Thank you for your encouragement, your real blessing. Thanks, Steve.

Steve Preston
Thank you so much. Collin, It’s really been a joy.