Hi! My name’s Dave Armstrong and I’m the CEO of GreenStone Farm Credit Services.

I was born and raised in Ionia, MI. My dad was in the farm supply and chicken rearing business and my mom was an elementary school teacher in both the Belding and Ionia Public School systems.

My career in agriculture came pretty naturally. All my aunts and uncles lived on farms. Plus, I often worked at the grain elevator in town and the chicken farm my dad and his partner owned. The work was often hard and always dirty! But, hey! What would you expect from a chicken farm, right? So, while I liked the people I worked with and was around in the “business,” I decided early on chicken farming wasn’t for me, but I might like to do something in agriculture.

With that decision made, I entered Michigan State University as a pre-veterinary medicine major. During my sophomore year, I decided that I really didn’t want to work another summer cleaning chicken houses so I started looking for “other opportunities.”

As luck would have it, I found a great opportunity with the Federal Intermediate Credit Bank of St. Paul as a summer intern at the Production Credit Association (PCA) of Southeastern Michigan. This experience opened my eyes to the number of career opportunities in agriculture that I had no idea even existed. And, as the saying goes, the rest is history.

Jim Schiller, former GreenStone C EO and CEO of the PCA of Southeast MI at the time when I interned, invited me to come back my junior year under an association internship and ultimately hired me as a loan officer at the Monroe, MI branch office after graduation from MSU in 1981 (o.k., go ahead and do the math! I’m old!!).

From there, I accepted a branch manager position with the Production Credit Association of Sandusky at its then Imlay City, MI branch office. I spent the next fourteen years of my career in Michigan’s “thumb” serving in several capacities, including the CEO of Farm Credit Services of East Central MI from 1996 through the end of 1999 when the four associations in the Lower Peninsula of Michigan agreed to merge effective January 1, 2000 to form what we now know as GreenStone Farm Credit Services.

I served as GreenStone’s Executive Vice President – Customer Delivery from 2000 until being named the new CEO to succeed Jim Schiller after his retirement effective January 1, 2009.

GreenStone takes up a significant amount of my time but I’m not complaining because I truly love what I do. I have been blessed to be able to work with, and for, some of the greatest people on earth…the farmers who feed us! Not only do I get inspiration from our customers but also our staff and board members alike. The common values shared by these groups are truly unique and something I will always treasure.

Other organizations I am involved with include the Michigan FFA Foundation, Michigan Rural Partners, and the Michigan Livestock Expo.

When I’m not working, I like to golf, read, take walks with my wife, and just hang out with family. I am also an avid MSU football and basketball fan and enjoy following the Spartans.

Finally, while I am very proud of what GreenStone and its predecessor organizations have accomplished over the years, the two most special things in my life are my wife of twenty-four years, Debra, and my daughter, Lindsey, who is a sophomore at where else, Michigan State! Family is very important to me and I’m, again, blessed to have a great one!