Homeownership is one of the most powerful wealth-building tools this country offers, and my path into the mortgage lending industry is an unlikely story that I could not be prouder to tell. In 2006, I was a methamphetamine addict living in an abandoned house, likely due for demolition, in Akron, Ohio. I had burned practically every bridge available to me. The mortgage industry was not on my radar; only survival.

I spent the better part of seven years in the grip of addiction. I survived situations and incidents that severely hurt or imprisoned nearly everyone else around me. I don’t know exactly why I was able to evade major consequences, and I’ve stopped trying to answer that question. What I know is that on one unremarkable day in 2006 – no dramatic rock bottom, no situational significance at all – I picked up the phone and called a mother I’d barely spoken to in years to ask if I could come home. She said yes.

Recovery was dark and harrowing. But I got through it. And once I did, I got a job pumping gas and running a cash register, where I discovered something I didn’t know existed within me, a drive and work ethic that had been ignited. I was going to run that gas station someday, I told myself. 

Well, I never did, because a few months later, a furniture store offered me a sales job, and I turned out to be pretty good at it. And then, like almost everyone in this industry, I fell backwards into mortgage lending. A recruiter told me the income a loan officer could potentially make. I didn’t need to hear much more than that. I wasn’t more talented than the next person, but I was determined to outwork everyone around me. That determination was the only advantage I ever had.

My career took a turn toward advocacy when I had the good fortune of working closely with Bill Cosgrove, who was the chairman of the Mortgage Bankers Association at the time. Bill is one of the hardest working and most driven businesspeople I’ve ever encountered, but what struck me was that he directed that intensity not just toward building a company, but toward shaping the industry itself. He had a fierce belief that the people inside this business had an obligation to participate in the policies and guidelines that governed it. That’s not a value you absorb passively. I’ve been blessed to cross paths with so many incredible leaders that have deliberately instilled this mindset, and it has changed the trajectory of my career.

Today, I have the privilege of serving on the board of the Ohio Mortgage Bankers Association and the board of Habitat for Humanity in Cleveland, Ohio. I’m grateful to work at Huntington Bank, where our colleagues deliver on our purpose of making people’s lives better and strengthening the communities we serve every day. I’m now positioned to contribute to meaningful dialogue on things like credit bureau pricing reform, GSE guidelines and access to credit for first-time homebuyers in underserved markets, among many other issues. It’s work I take seriously because I observe and understand personally what it costs people when systems fail them. 

I’m not suggesting my history is the only reason I care about homeownership and the mortgage industry, but it’s a pretty strong corollary. I’ve recently started talking publicly about where I came from with the hopes of helping others. The response has been overwhelming, mostly from people who identified with or were encouraged by my story. I’m still figuring out how to tell my story in a way that’s useful. But what I do know is that the values recovery has given me – to show up, do the work, have integrity, own your mistakes, and not confuse your circumstances with your ceiling – are the same values that drive the best advocacy for this entire industry.

We still have enormous work to do to make homeownership genuinely available, not just to borrowers who fit cleanly into an automated underwriting box, but to people who took a longer, less linear road to get here. First-generation buyers. People who’ve been told no. People whose path to a down payment is superseded by the need to pay exorbitant rent or childcare costs.

I’m grateful for a lot of things. I’m grateful to the mother who said yes when she had every reason not to. I’m grateful to an industry that gave someone like me a chance to build a meaningful life. And I’m grateful for the opportunity to help make our communities and our industry better, for this generation and those who follow, and for all those who still see owning a home as a dream that we can help make a reality.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of HousingWire’s editorial department and its owners. To contact the editor responsible for this piece: zeb@hwmedia.com.