Denise began her career as a professional mediator before she became a lawyer.

 

In the mid-1980’s, after graduating from public policy school and working for a public policy consulting firm, she apprenticed with one of the pioneers in public policy mediation, Professor Lawrence Susskind, Director of the Harvard-MIT Public Disputes Program, part of the Program on Negotiation based at Harvard Law School.

 

She eventually became Associate Director of the Public Disputes Program, where she mediated multi-party public policy disputes at the state and local levels, involving various business, citizen, public interest and government stakeholders.

 

Seeing the role that lawyers often played in those negotiations, she decided to expand her skill set by going to law school, clerking at large law firms in Boston, MA, Tokyo, Japan, and Sydney, Australia, before joining a large firm in Washington DC.

 

Denise eventually returned to her “roots” as a mediator, joining Jonathan Marks at the boutique mediation practice he built with Eric Green at Endispute, Inc..  Initially based in Washington, DC, she divided her mediation practice between high-stakes cases in litigation and multi-party public policy negotiations at the federal level.

 

After JAMS acquired Endispute, she mediated with JAMS and ADR Services in Los Angeles before finally opening her own practice, MadiganADR, in 2015.

 

On a more personal note, Denise was born in North Dakota and raised in Minnesota and Wisconsin.  She attended college in Chicago, IL and law and graduate school in Cambridge, MA.  

 

Denise loves music and has sung in symphonic choruses in concert halls in the United States, Russia and Italy.  And when she can separate herself from her two dogs and travel from LA to winter snow, she is an enthusiastic – if not especially skilled - cross-country skier.