Liza Murphy

Murphy’s CV is full of surprises: In the middle of a highly successful business career, Liza Murphy went directly from Wall Street to start a new working life within environmental science. From there she went on to focus on efficient market linkage approaches within theFSC certification body the Rainforest Alliance. And finally in October 2007, she started a new career within FSC International in Bonn.

This path may seem twisted, but it all makes sense to Murphy herself. Presenting herself as “just a former Wall Streeter”, she is deeply engaged in making a difference to the way the corporate world responds to environmental and social concerns.
 

The wall street experience

Liza Murphy manifested her professionalism at an early stage. For example, she became a co-director of the organization in which she took a student job.

And soon after she had completed a bachelor’s degree in science, she was holding top business positions at Wall Street including as Vice President of international financial organizations such as American Express and Travelers Group (now Citigroup), and Vice President of one of the world’s leading investment banks, JP Morgan.

Several of the organizations she worked with were growing fast. For example, during her three years as a partner in the company Lockwood Financial Services, her department grew from 2 to 35 employees, and the firm grew from start-up with no assets to a total of over 5 billion dollars in assets. In her work with financial organisations, Murphy was dedicated to business development, building up communication systems and streamlining processes that enabled the organisations to keep up with their growth.
 

From business to environmental science

However, Liza Murphy chose to move on from financial business. After almost 20 successful years at Wall Street, she prepared for a big change by studying Conservation Biology at Columbia University.

That led to an opportunity to get directly involved in projects focusing on elephant conservation strategies through work in South Africa at the University of Pretoria. She continued within environmental science for several years, working with Columbia University as well as the American Museum of Natural History.

What brought about this career shift? Murphy explains:”For me personally, the change from the business world to environmental science wasn’t as dramatic as it might seem – in fact, it was a logical step in my career plans. First of all, working for a better environment was something I had always tried to do. Secondly, what interests me is the intersection between business life and conservation – the Corporate Responsibility (CR) arena. In my view, you can’t separate the two. I went from the corporate world to the science world in order to get some basic knowledge about conservation issues, with the aim to come back and work within CR”. She adds that “ with the current economic challenges this concept of partnering for mutual success has never been more important.”
 

Success in promoting FSC

And that’s exactly what she did. Following her venture into natural science, Murphy spent 3 years as senior manager of the marketing and business development unit of the Rainforest Alliance.

During this time, she made several remarkable successes. Among other achievements, she developed training programs focused on successful marketing of FSC for certificate holders which reached more than 1,500 marketing and sales staff; she developed a very popular series of online guides – SmartGuides – for locating FSC products and distributors; and she helped to design successful strategies for media outreach and policy work. Last but not least, she worked with Scholastic Publishers, the worlds largest childrens' book publisher to develop a procurement policy that required FSC certified paper, resulting in the single largest purchase of FSC paper ever made, for the 7th Harry Potter book published in the US.

Murphy’s career is a testimony to her ability to build efficient communication systems and to steer organizations successfully through periods of rapid change. Those capabilities come in handy in her current position as Managing Director of the FSC Global Support unit. The unit focuses on developing certification holder support and market development tools and strategies for the entire FSC global system.

Current challenges

Murphy says: “We’re now at the stage of our growth where we need to add new capabilities to support certificate holders in their drive to develop the market. There’s a need to protect the investments that FSC certified companies have made, and to build the tools that help companies to capitalise on their certified brand”.

During her time within FSC, a new online platform for trademark users has been developed, and FSC has produced an online market info pack with FSC-related market figures. One of the key challenges of FSC is to ensure sufficient financial support to run the FSC system itself. “Few are aware that there’s very little revenue generated by the certification process to FSC as an organization”, she explains.
 

Changes ahead

One of the solutions to ensure a stable financial situation for FSC is to reform the conditions for using the FSC trademarks. “We’re developing a new trademark license system which will be phased in over the next 6 years”, Murphy informs. “The new system will recognize the contributions that existing certificate holders have already made to build the FSC brand worldwide. This will involve significant recognition for long-term users of the FSC trademarks as well as for those who are actively promoting the FSC brand”.

When asked what her next challenge might be, Murphy responds that she finds her position in FSC Global Development challenging enough for the time being. However, her unusual talent for navigating change does not deny itself, when she ponders: “Who knows - I might just take up shark diving some day.....!”