Secretary of Housing and Human Development: Shaun Donovan

Donovan has been commissioner of the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development during which time he managed a $7.5bn plan to put 500,000 New Yorkers in affordable housing. He has a more daunting task than most incoming HUD Secretaries ­ because it was a US mortgage crisis that kicked of the global recession. The 42-year-old Harvard-trained architect is yet another centrist choice with experience occupying "a middle ground between free-market forces who opposed government controls and liberal groups that believed only government and nonprofit groups could be counted on to provide housing for the working class," says the New York Times.

FIRST POSTED JANUARY 6, 2009