Kristina Stanger hears a call to serve her clients, her country, and her community. Within every achievement, success, and honor, she sees a challenge. “It’s a call to do more,” she says.
She answers her call by assisting clients with bankruptcy, creditors rights, and commercial litigation. “Jokingly, I tell my mom I do ‘deals that go bad,’” she says. However, she is serious about helping clients with business reformation, loan restructuring, collateral and contract disputes, real estate litigation, workouts, asset protection, and dispute resolution.
“I approach life as a servant leader to achieve two ideals: freedom and justice,” Kristina says. “As legal professionals, we are representatives of this branch of government, and this is our charge: to work for the people seeking relief under our laws. Whether it is a simple contract dispute or a large Chapter 11 company reorganization where jobs are on the line, I know this is their day in court. This is their opportunity to access justice—and I am their advocate.”
Following those principles, Kristina helps secured and unsecured creditors in a variety of contexts and industries such as energy, retail, grocery, real estate, agriculture, health care, construction, transportation and manufacturing. She is not afraid to work a resolution from a business, litigation, or legislative perspective. “All tools are on the table,” she says. Kristina knows she may be in the courtroom one day and the boardroom the next.
The first college graduate from her rural DeWitt, Iowa, family, Kristina knew the law was her objective in the second grade. In the fifth grade, she washed dishes at the local Maid-Rite to earn money to participate in mock trial. Her parents supported her goal—as long as she was serving people and found a way to pay for it. “As a small town, hardworking country girl, I have a passion for serving, but I sought a chance to think strategically and solve problems,” she says. “So I became a lawyer.”
In college, a fortuitous meeting with a National Guardsman during a choir trip introduced her to the National Guard. She joined the service eight days later and served for 25 years before retiring from the Iowa Army National Guard in 2022 as a Lieutenant Colonel.
“That acapella trip to Wales was life-changing because it was the catalyst toward what I am now—not only in both careers, but also in how I approach serving clients, serving my community and what’s important to our family,” Kristina says.
As she has grown in the legal profession, Kristina looked for a comprehensive way to solve problems. She discovered the restructuring profession. “In it, I found the opportunity to use a multidiscipline and creative approach to solving problems with my clients,” she says. Finally, this has become the rewarding profession I sought out since the second grade.”