Laura W. Murphy

Corporate and public policy expert

Expert in:

Website: https://lwmurphy.com/about.html

Laura W. Murphy is president of Laura Murphy & Associates, a firm that advises corporate and non-profit clients. She is also a civil rights and civil liberties leader, who served for 17 years as the first woman and African American director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. At the ACLU, Laura was instrumental in the passage of numerous laws including the Fair Sentencing Act and the USA Freedom Act. She testified more than a dozen times before Congress and was celebrated for building effective bipartisan coalitions.

More recently, she led the pioneering civil rights audits of Airbnb (2016) and Facebook (2020) that resulted in substantial reforms at those companies. She previously worked for the late Reps. Parren Mitchell and Shirley Chisholm, the Hon. Willie Brown, the Hon. Sharon Pratt Kelly and Rev. Jesse L. Jackson. She is a graduate of Wellesley College and was a Harvard Advanced Leadership fellow in 2016.