Biography

After working in Washington on the staff of U.S. Senator Edward M. Kennedy, and in New York for the Ford Foundation and National Coalition for Haitian Refugees, Mark Murphy arrived in New Jersey in 1985 as a Roothbert Fellow in Peace Studies at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School. Obtaining his Masters degree and teaching Human Rights and U.S. Foreign Policy there, Mark has served the Wilson School on its Advisory Council and as Chair of alumni giving. Mark's service to New Jersey includes helping shape Governor Tom Kean's welfare reform program at the Department of Human Services, chief of staff to the 1990 State Legislative Redistricting Commission. Chair of the State Office of Dispute Resolution, and founding Chair of the Council of New Jersey Grantmakers. Over the course of twenty years as Executive Director and President of the The Fund for New Jersey, Mark helped found over twenty organizations working to enhance life in New Jersey. He is editor of Agenda New Jersey, a compendium of expert policy reports covering Campaign Reform, Fiscal Responsibility, Better Schools, Strengthening Families, Saving Our Land and Water, and Building Our Cities. Mark is a senior policy fellow at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, a W.K. Kellogg Foundation national Fellow, and a proud member of Lead New Jersey's Class of 1991.