For more than 15 years, Tamara Murray has helped social-change organizations say what they want to say — and get heard, from the The New York Times to award-winning public education campaigns.
Tamara specializes in branding, messaging and content creation. One of her superpowers is conveying an idea in the fewest words possible. She has a track record of persuading audiences on issues including homelessness, immigration, trauma-informed care, civil liberties, education and health equity.
Previously, Tamara was a vice president at Fenton Communications and has also served in-house with The San Francisco Foundation, ACLU of San Diego and NARAL Pro-Choice California. She is the author of Awesome Supervisory Skills: Seven Lessons for Young, First-Time Managers, and can be spotted cycling around Santa Barbara, California with her husband Chris.
Why are you a strategist for good?
“It’s in my blood. My grandmother went door to door in her small Filipino town to promote family planning long before it was considered acceptable. I’ve always believed I should use my talents to ‘Leave it better than you found it.’”
Who is your intellectual crush?
“Tara Westover, the author of Educated. The child of survivalist parents in rural Idaho, she received little formal education until teaching herself enough to pass the ACT and attend university, eventually earning her PhD. She talks about the stories we tell — about ourselves, each other, and our world — and that the true power of education is the freedom and courage to change those stories. I could listen to her all day.”
What’s your superpower?
“I’m a textbook ESTJ, which means I have supernatural executive function: I love taking a vision or idea, reverse engineering how to bring it to life, and then actually doing it. The Weezer song Island in the Sun? I always thought the lyrics went, ‘We’ll be planning, having fun.’ (It’s actually ‘playing.’) It never occured to me that planning isn’t considered fun to everyone.”
