when principal financial group ceo dan houston was 11 years old his parents put him on a greyhound bus to travel some 960 miles from his houston texas home to denison iowa to work on his grandparents farm “we’d make fence build buildings plant crops make hay all the things that go into that” he says “the farm taught me some great lessons i got to know what hard work looks like” no doubt there was some character building out in that hot midwestern sun it could be where houston pronounced ‘howstin’ like the street in new york city rather than like his hometown learned to stick with something and not quit he met his future wife in iowa when he was 15 and they dated long distance through high school and after the couple graduated from iowa state yes dan’s a proud cyclone he joined principal ticker pfg in 1984 and has “done just about every job there” until becoming ceo in 2015