Principal Financial Group

But in the capital city of Des Moines, there's also the compelling attraction of one of the most notable investment management firms in the world.

On this episode, we speak with leaders from Principal Asset Management for insights on real estate investing straight from their heartland headquarters.

Having this broad perspective really gives us a better ability to assess relative value.

How risk is being priced across this broad real estate universe just makes us all better investors.

That's Devin Chen, Principal Asset Management's head of private equity real estate portfolio management, total portfolio of approximately $110 billion, a mix of public and private equity and debt.

I'm often asked do I like equity or debt, public or private more.

I sort of reject the premise of the question.

There's a home for all of them in a portfolio.

David Miller, Executive Director for Homes for Iowa.

And Sri Reddy, Senior Vice President of Retirement and Income Solutions for Principal Financial Group.

Ahead of the event, the visit record talked with Mim Harold about IJAG and its role in helping prepare students for jobs in manufacturing and other job sectors.

The business record also interviewed, via email, Meg Schneider, Vice President of Strategic Initiatives and Member Engagement for the Iowa Association of Business and Industry.

And it also was an industry I knew that could translate a into an opportunity back in the Des Moines area.

In Des Moines, you have Wells Fargo, Principal Financial Group, and a number of other banks.

So in 1999...

I decided to, over the next year, I'm going to figure this out and I'm going to get back home.

But that's okay.

I really wanted to work for Principal Financial Group because it was the largest employer in the state of Iowa, which is where I'm from.

And so I foresaw myself being able to stay with Principal forever in this wealth management sector.

And they ended up needing people who could conduct 401k enrollment and investment meetings for all of their institutional clients.

So companies that had $25 million or more in plan assets.

So for me, it was really fun to be able to apply something from my work into a practical aspect of my life.

So I learned a lot about money in that regard.

And I learned as my career went on, I was with Principal for five years and they're predominantly an insurance-based wealth planning firm.

Now, before I get into the stories, yesterday we had our CHRO group meeting, a really fascinating conversation, and I'll share a little bit more about that in just a little bit.

But our guest was the CHRO of Principal Financial Group, 20,000 employees.

And she was talking about how in this AI tech-driven world, they're also trying to balance the human skills and capabilities to go beyond just prompting, right? So if you have your employees who are really good at using these AI tools, but they're not good at the human skills and capabilities, then what's the point? So again, I'll share a little bit more about that in a few minutes.

I'll probably do a little bit of an article summary on that for Substack as well.

And tomorrow, we're going to be joined by Lisa Colson.

She is the CEO of Principal Financial Group, a big organization.

I think they have around 20,000 employees.

And she is obviously a member of our group.

And our topic is going to be human capabilities with technical skills.

One of our members, the CHRO of Principal Financial, Lisa Coulson.

She's going to be talking about what they're doing internally at their 20,000 person organization.

You know, balancing AI with human capabilities and skills.

Like, the game was muted, and they were just, they were just riffing, you know? So definitely I just wanna brainstorm to make a, an enjoyable view.

I, I don't wanna repeat the Prin- I was watching some, uh, old interview of mine, and I brought up the Principal episode, and so I wanna do that-

Word

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I forgot about that one too.

That was awesome, yeah.

That one, that, that one went better than the, than the Principal.

But I will say, based on Patreon, if you watch something people have seen and review it, they respond.