Forty Under 40: Eva Madison

With her green thumb and love of animals, Eva Madison, 33, knows a little about digging and clawing. That came in handy while clerking for U.S. Judge G. Thomas Eisele in Little Rock and later while working on the legal team at Wal-Mart Stores Inc.

A Fayetteville native and a 1998 graduate of the University of Arkansas School of Law, where she finished first in her class of 112 students, Madison aided Eisele on a rare federal death penalty case that reached a jury.

But Madison said she learned more working on employment law from 2002 to 2004 at Wal-Mart than she could have in several years of private practice.

A 1993 mathematics graduate of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., Madison spent a year assisting then U.S. Sen. David Pryor, D-Ark., in Washington, D.C., and another teaching middle school in Jackson, Tenn. She said middle school girls were more challenging than law or politics.

She practiced with a well-known Nashville, Tenn., firm before Wal-Mart called her home.

In 2004, she returned to private practice and helped Wright Lindsey & Jennings LLP start its Rogers office.

Madison is president of the Humane Society of the Ozarks and volunteers with Habitat for Humanity.