This post was originally published on this site.
Stephen C. Murphy, Yale’s vice president for finance and chief financial officer, will retire in June 2026, after serving the university for a quarter century, top Yale leaders said today.
“Steve has provided both steady and dynamic leadership of the university’s finances,” President Maurie McInnis and Geoff Chatas, senior vice president for operations, wrote in a message announcing the news. “He has worked with multiple generations of administrators to advance our academic mission through financial strategy, insight, services, and advice. Across these efforts, he has championed integrity, foresight, and a positive work environment.”
Murphy ’87, who first came to Yale as a student in Yale College, returned after 14 years as a management consultant and financial leader for technology and consumer goods companies.
In his professional life at the university, Murphy has concentrated on “building effective and enduring change,” McInnis and Chatas wrote, helping lay much of the foundation for how the university now manages its finances. Those reforms include establishing the Budget Advisory Group, the Business Operations organization, the Institutional Standards of Conduct, and the guiding principles for both university operations and the financial management organizational model.
Murphy also emphasized financial education throughout Yale, McInnis and Chatas wrote. He made the annual budget book available to the campus community, helped people understand Yale’s budget through frequent presentations, contributed to the publicly available Funding Yale website, and sponsored the creation of a financial training curriculum for staff campus-wide.
Murphy returned to Yale in 2001, first as lead administrator for the Office of Cooperative Research, and rose through a series of financial and administrative leadership roles. He is also a member of the board of trustees for Yale New Haven Hospital, a fellow of Berkeley College, and a former trustee of Saint Thomas More Catholic Chapel & Center at Yale, the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art in London, and The Foote School in New Haven.
More recently, McInnis and Chatas wrote, Murphy has helped secure Yale’s financial outlook by serving as co-sponsor of the OneFinance strategic initiative to bolster the university’s financial management. He has also played a key role in formulating plans for how to respond to the increased endowment tax and cuts to federal research funding, they said.
“Steve leaves a legacy of recruiting and developing talent, pursuing ambitious goals, and continually reflecting on and refining the university’s financial stewardship,” McInnis and Chatas wrote. “His focus on building robust teams and fostering a positive work environment has positioned Finance to continue supporting Yale’s mission well into the future.
“We are grateful for Steve’s decades of service to our university and for his commitment to supporting a smooth transition in the coming months.”
McInnis and Chatas said they would share details about the leadership transition soon.
Provost Scott Strobel and his immediate predecessor, Ben Polak, underscored Murphy’s deep, varied, and steady contributions to Yale, as a professional, a committed university citizen, and a model of integrity.
“Steve is an exceptional leader and university citizen whose expertise, innovation, and strategic perspective have been invaluable to both the university and to me in my role as provost,” Strobel said. “His integrity, work ethic, and commitment to Yale’s mission are unwavering. He will be deeply missed, but the positive impact of his legacy will be felt for years to come. I am grateful for the strong financial team he has assembled to advance and support the university’s future.”
Polak, who served as provost from 2013 through 2019 and is the William C. Brainard Professor of Economics, called Murphy “the best university CFO in the country.”
“If you add up all the resources that Steve has contributed to Yale’s mission, that he has directed toward teaching and research and financial aid, it is the largest single gift in Yale’s history, hundreds of millions of dollars,” Polak said. “But the dollars don’t tell the whole story, or even the main story. Steve’s greatest legacy — the first, second and third word I would use to describe Steve — boils down to one word: integrity. That integrity lies at the foundation of the financial governance system that Steve Murphy and Provost Scott Strobel have built for Yale. It is a foundation on which the future will build.”
Murphy himself called his time at Yale “a great blessing” as he was able “to witness the breathtaking commitment and love of all the people who make this place run every day — often out of sight, often underappreciated.
“I’ve heard some say the campus looks like Hogwarts; well maybe, and I feel like I’ve been let in on the most important magic Yale has to offer. The magic is the people.”
He also reflected on a comment made by Martin Griffin, who was dean of undergraduate studies in the 1980s.
“‘Like any institution or society, [Griffin said], Yale is a partnership between those who have gone before, those who are here now, and those who are yet to come… everything that we do redounds in a special way to the advantage of everyone else who has ever been here or who will ever come here.’ That really resonated with me.
“As I reflect on my career at Yale, I am grateful and humbled for the opportunity to be part of that partnership, to try and do the best with my time here for God, for country, and for Yale.”