Kathleen A. Murphy ’82 is a media executive, entrepreneur, and strategic advisor whose career has taken her from the front lines of national television to the C-suite of some of America’s most influential businesses. Today, through Murphy Media Partners, she advises CEOs, founders, athletes, and major brands at the intersection of media, business, technology, and sports.
A veteran broadcaster and executive producer, she hosted a live, daily three-hour national talk show on USA Network and was selected as one of the finalists to succeed Kathie Lee Gifford alongside Regis Philbin on ABC’s nationally syndicated Live. Kathleen has anchored and produced for ESPN, ABC, NBC, Fox Sports, Discovery, and MSG, covering everything from the Tour de France and US Open tennis to the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona, and was the only woman anchor for college and Canadian football on The Football Network. She later brought that live-media instinct into business, working directly with entrepreneurs including Priceline founder Jay Walker, Steve Case, and Michael Loeb. At Walker Digital, she conceived and negotiated The Wall Street Journal Business Travel Service, a strategic partnership that reached more than 40 million customers. Kathleen was also an early architect of the business of women’s sports, building executive networks and founding SIGHT Lines: The Business of Women’s Sports.
At Amherst College, Kathleen earned her Bachelor of Arts in English. She later received a Master of Arts in publishing from Radcliffe College. Outside of work, Kathleen has run with the bulls in Pamplona four times, completed two New York City Marathons, tracked gorillas in Uganda, and spent time fly fishing in Alaska.
How do you use your liberal arts education in the work you do today?
My Amherst experience is wholly baked into what I do. It’s a muscle that’s continuously exercised and used in regard to how I think and the paths that I take. Those paths, and the stops along the way themselves, are awash in my liberal arts thinking. (Well, that’s either an interesting sentence or quite the meandering one.) Saying “yes” to things is part of my DNA. Making my world bigger is part of my DNA. I have worked in a variety of industries – on air in national media, publishing, sports, investing, and now with founders, builders, celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and CEOs. I draw on all the arrows in my quiver to do that work. Adding to that quiver, continuing to say “yes”, has been a journey since my college days, and continues to be.