Kreiter gives her all, has it all

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Women really can have it all. Just ask Maria Kreiter.

“You see articles about: What does it mean to have it all? Can women have it all? I have two boys who are doing great. I have a job I love. I don’t know what else there is. I feel like I do have it all,” said Kreiter, a shareholder with Godfrey and Kahn.

“Any career is kind of a balancing act. But, for me, if I looked back 10 years ago and thought, ‘Where do I think my career and my life would go?’ I don’t know I would have foreseen that I feel that. I do feel like I have it all.”

Her sons, ages 4 and 9, adopted with her husband, Ryan, in 2013, are a big piece of that, partly because they’ve blended so well into her world, starting with their adoption ceremony, when “The Good Judge” Aaron Goodstein added a much-appreciated dose of pomp and circumstance by putting on a mock trial and banging the gavel to formally mark the family’s forging.

It was like coming full circle for Kreiter, who started her career as a clerk with Judge Goodstein — far from her expected future as a geology professor.

It’s a path she abandoned after talking with another professor in the field, who had worked as an expert witness and suggested Kreiter consider law.

After sitting in on a law class and talking to an attorney, Kreiter enrolled in law school.

“I still did not think, ‘I’m destined for litigation.’ I thought I would be an environmental lawyer.”

Then she met Charlie Bar, a boutique firm attorney, who sold her on being a litigator.

“Sometimes I wonder if I had not worked for Charlie, I don’t know. Would I have been on a tax team somewhere? I would have died on the vine,” Kreiter said.

Instead, she landed at Godfrey and Kahn in 2007, where she’s a standout on the firm’s litigation team in Milwaukee, focusing on financial services.

“She’s an excellent lawyer, and she is just absolutely tireless,” managing partner Nic Wahl said. “I would say the level of her commitment to her clients, to the firm, to the mentoring she does, to her family, to the community — you can sense the intensity around her. I think what motivates her is doing the right thing.”

That and repaying the mentors who helped her find a life she never expected.

“I guess I just feel like I’m really lucky to be where I’m at,” Kreiter said. “I would not have envisioned this as my path, but I’m on the path.”