This week’s Business Record takes a look at “Iowans You Should Know,” profiling people who work behind the scenes to get things done.

In that same vein, I thought you might enjoy meeting three Iowans you should have known, prominent leaders from earlier times who also worked behind the scenes for the good of the community.

Bob Houser (1919-2007)

Bob served the Des Moines area in two distinctly separate but equally essential roles during his career.

The East High School graduate started in the mailroom of The Bankers Life Co. (now Principal Financial Group Inc.) and rose to become chairman, president and CEO of the company.

Along the way, he changed the corporate culture from an inward, industry focus to an outward, community orientation.

Before Houser, local leaders had a hard time persuading executives at Bankers Life to participate in community betterment efforts. Houser turned that around. As Des Moines lawyer Harlan “Bud” Hockenberg told me recently, “Bob would say: You’ve got to prove to us why we should not do this for Des Moines.”

Houser laid the groundwork for Principal’s extensive downtown campus, and for involvement in community betterment projects beginning with the Civic Center of Greater Des Moines in 1979 and culminating with the Principal Riverwalk, which is now nearing completion.

After retiring in 1984, Houser served 16 years as president of Des Moines Development Corp., the private group that was instrumental in development of Western Gateway Park and the Iowa Events Center, among other downtown cultural venues.

Elaine Szymoniak (1920-2009)

Elaine played a key role in getting the World Food Prize Foundation located in Des Moines. In 1977, the vocational education teacher became only the second woman to serve on the Des Moines City Council.

She remained on the council, despite unsuccessful campaigns for mayor in 1979 and 1987. But in 1988, she won the first of two elections to the Iowa Senate.

Szymoniak had barely taken her Senate seat in 1989 when General Foods Corp., sponsor of the World Food Prize, which had been acquired a few years earlier by Philip Morris Cos., decided to end the sponsorship.

Szymoniak was the first to react when Des Moines Register editorial writer Rox Laird wrote a plea for Iowans to pick up the sponsorship.

She persuaded Greater Des Moines Chamber of Commerce Federation President Mike Reagen to host a breakfast for World Food Prize representatives at the Des Moines Club. One of the attendees was John Ruan, who ultimately took over the sponsorship and provided a permanent endowment for the prize.

Before he did, though, freshman state senator Szymoniak persuaded Senate Appropriations Chairman Leonard Boswell to sponsor legislation setting aside $250,000 of state money as a matching grant to cover the first-year cost of the prize.

Joe Rosenfield (1904-2000)

Joe was Iowa’s Warren Buffett.

Unlike Buffett, though, Rosenfield had several careers before hitting his stride as an investing genius and philanthropist extraordinaire. He was a lawyer who took over his family’s business, Younkers department stores, and turned it into a regional chain before retiring in 1969 to continue life as an investor and benefactor.

Rosenfield and Buffett met sometime in the mid-1960s and became such close friends that Buffett, who was 26 years younger, considered Rosenfield a father figure. They served together on the board of directors of Grinnell College and between them created one of the richest private college endowments in the nation.

Rosenfield was the Bill Knapp and Jim Cownie of his day, raising money for everything from inner-city youth programs to the money used to launch Living History Farms.