Spotlight on MAUREEN MURPHY
 

Editor's Note: When this Spotlight feature originally ran in the Summer 2006 issue of the EACUBO Newsletter, the final paragraph-and-a-half was inadvertently cut off. The error was corrected in the PDF version posted on the web site, and we are rerunning the complete article here.

Boston born and bred, Maureen Murphy, currently, Vice President for Financial Affairs and Treasurer at Brandeis, actually started her career as a dental hygienist. When I asked her what led her into that field, she indicated that it was more what she didn’t want to do — she didn’t want to be a teacher, she didn’t want to be secretary, and she didn’t want to be a nurse, and so someone suggested she become a dental hygienist. She also mentioned that when she was graduating from high school, her father suggested she become either a lawyer or an accountant to which she had replied, No way!

After about a year, she decided dental hygienist wasn’t what she wanted to be and so she went to Northeastern University where she obtained her bachelor’s degree in Allied Health while deciding if she wanted to go to dental or medical school. About that time, her brother-in-law enrolled at Northeastern in their program aimed at steering graduates into public accounting and tried to persuade Maureen’s husband to join him, which he wasn’t too interested in doing. Whereupon, Maureen decided to try this path herself, enrolling in the sixteen month program leading to her Masters of Science in Accounting from Northeastern. During this time, she interned with Peat Marwick, eventually going to work for them when she completed her degree. Subsequently, she obtained a second master’s degree, this time from Bentley College, in part, because she thought there would be a need for more awareness of tax issues in higher education and also to meet her CPA CPE requirements.

With Peat Marwick, now KPMG, Maureen worked her way up the ladder to become a manager after four years. Yet, two years later, she left. Maureen explained that she had started a family and although she was on the career path to make partner she ultimately decided that the public accounting profession wasn’t the best fit for her family. When I asked her what kind of out-of-town schedule she had, she commented that during her first four years she had only been out of town once. However, on promotion to manager, common practice had been that the new manager got all the out-of-town engagements but, in her case, they agreed to make an exception.

When she decided to leave, she went to work for a small film company but quickly decided it wasn’t a good fit. Although she had had some reservations about the professionalism in the higher education field, she made contact with Tufts University, where she had worked on the audit, and ended up as their Associate Controller in 1986.

(She also had worked on audits at Holy Cross, Endicott, and Babson.) She explained that her reservations were that higher education didn’t provide the depth of experience, something she quickly discovered was not a valid criticism. We both commented on the change that has occurred in higher education management over recent time to a greater degree of professionalism.

After eleven years at Tufts, Maureen saw a chance to move up and accepted the position as University Controller at Brandeis, a position that had been vacant for many months. She explained that her boss, the Executive Vice President and COO, gave her a leadership role to organize that part of the financial operations. After two years at Brandeis, she was promoted to Associate Vice President and more recently her title was changed to Vice President and Treasurer, indicating an expansion of her responsibilities. During her time, she implemented the PeopleSoft management information systems. While she oversees endowment management, Brandeis engages a consultant to provide investment services to the University and to the Board of Trustees Investment Committee.

Currently, she serves on the Board of the Boston Consortium, an organization of fourteen colleges and universities in the Boston area. Among their areas of collaboration are benefit programs, such as life insurance, some aspects of purchasing, health safety programs and crisis management planning. One of her specific interests is internal audit since seven of the schools do not have internal audit staff. Through their combined efforts, Grant Thornton was engaged to develop a risk profile for each participating institution and to provide two to three internal audits in selected areas. Another joint effort has been in risk management since, again, many of the smaller schools do not have dedicated staff in this area. An immediate benefit has been significant savings in insurance costs and the next step will be to look at “best practices” in risk management. While each school is free to decide the extent to which they well participate, Maureen thinks it has worked well.

Maureen stated that her first involvement in Association activities was the year that the NACUBO annual meeting came to Boston and she was asked to serve on the planning committee for that event. Interestingly, she said her involvement in EACUBO started when she filled out the form that appeared in one of our newsletters and found herself on the annual meeting committee for our association. Maureen has found the networking opportunities well worth the time. More recently, she has joined the EACUBO Board and we welcome her active participation.