We are Priscilla Sternat-McIvor and Lisa Manaigre – the partners of Sternat Manaigre Law Corporation. We opened our female, indigenous-owned law firm in March 2017, with the help of the First Peoples Economic Growth Fund. We were lucky enough to learn about FPEGF through our former law firm.

Without the lending and grant opportunities afforded to us by FPEGF, it is doubtful that we would have been able to open our firm within a relatively short time frame (under six months). We were able to quickly access the funds that we needed to start our planning, purchase our equipment, and set up a full office in months. We were able to start our operation with the technology needed for remote work from day one, with the idea in mind that this kind of flexibility was important in supporting women working in private legal practice.

Little did we know that this would also make it easy for our team to transition to working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic without skipping a beat. Since our initial loan was granted to us, we have been able to work with our account manager to foresee changes to our business and adapt to them before they happen. We have found the account managers at First Peoples to be responsive and agile in helping us to meet our business’s needs.

The support that we have received from FPEGF has helped our firm grow from four lawyers to nine lawyers and from three full-time staff to four full-time staff. We are proud to support indigenous hiring wherever possible and we are constantly finding ways to support the greater community through our lawyer volunteer hours, supporting many boards and organizations, giving to those less fortunate with our annual Christmas hampers and offering flexible payment arrangements to our clients who require competent and compassionate legal services but are not able to access Legal Aid.
We look forward to a continued, strong relationship with FPEGF as we continue to grow our firm. Chief Dennis Meeches
President, Arrowhead Development Corporation