Laura Murphy is no stranger to navigating civil rights, politics and policy. As the former director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s (ACLU) Washington, D.C. office, she was integral in the enactment of civil liberty laws and policies, including issues such as national security, LGBTQ+ rights, women's rights, civil rights, First Amendment rights, and criminal justice reform.

After more than forty years of working, Murphy decided it was time to step away from the ACLU and envision what came next. While attending a march led by Rev. Al Sharpton, head of the National Action Network, to protest police brutality and excessive use of force, she ran into friend and 2014 Harvard Advanced Leadership Initiative (ALI) Fellow, Lezli Baskerville. At that very moment Lezli just happened to be on the phone with Professor Charles Olgetree, an ALI faculty advisor.  Always a believer in lifelong learning, Murphy took Lezli and Olgetree’s advice and applied to ALI.

“It was like being hungry and going to a buffet,” Murphy says of the program and its abundance of course offerings. One of the most influential for Murphy was a course taught by Dr. Robert Livingston at the Harvard Kennedy School on how discrimination manifests, how we identify it, and what strategies work in combating it.

Soon after Murphy took the course, an acquaintance with connections to Airbnb reached out. The company was looking for ways to reframe their practices after the release of a Harvard Business School study and a social media campaign that alleged Airbnb hosts discriminated against  Black users. Murphy was hired to lead an investigation— the first ever business civil rights audit—and come up with recommendations for effective policies and products to address bias. From there, a new career was launched, and in 2018 Facebook hired Murphy to lead a bigger and more  wide-ranging audit. Through her work with these and subsequent companies, Murphy pioneered and developed the concept of a “civil rights  audit” for corporations. It is important to note that these audits  go beyond diversity equity and inclusion in employment, contracting, senior management and board composition.

 Although there was skepticism inside the company about the feasibility of changing human behavior—especially that of homeowners deciding who comes into their home—those questions helped Murphy anticipate challenges that could arise in implementing new policies. “Ideas and philosophies clash all the time,” says Murphy who has come to expect opposition, especially when a company is encouraged to go beyond what law or court order is requiring. Murphy’s years of experience as the chief ACLU lobbyist who deftly worked with Democrats and Republicans to enact legislation prepared her for the challenge, and helped her make the audit a success. As a result of her audits, large companies have instituted significant policy and structural changes, including more robust anti-discrimination policies and hiring a new vice president for civil rights at Facebook.

Murphy soon realized the demand for civil rights audits far exceeded what she herself could handle – so she set about multiplying her capacity. First, in 2021 she wrote and published “The Rationale for and Key Elements of a Business Civil Rights Audit” to serve as a blueprint for other auditors. The report, endorsed by The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and supported by the Ford Foundation, has been praised widely by civil rights leaders and has been embraced by several corporations. She is now working with a foundation to create a program that will train and build capacity among a new generation of auditors.

According to Murphy, ridding corporate operations of discrimination problems can have tremendous long-term impact on a company’s reputation, economic viability and on consumers’ socioeconomic mobility, health, and safety. “We can build a society that’s less discriminatory, more inclusive;” she said, “We can get a bank to stop denying loans to businesses in underserved neighborhoods; We can stop a company from putting toxic waste in low-income communities; We can stop a company from using problematic facial recognition software that cannot distinguish one brown-skinned or Asian person from another; We can get technology companies to ensure the metaverse treats  all people, equally regardless of race, religion, gender, age, sexual orientation, ability, gender identity, etc. , and we can get companies to stop building algorithms that used flawed data sets that lead to systemic bias. 

“These are very serious challenges that we need businesses to confront,” says Murphy, adding that corporations have enormous economic and cultural influence which exceed that of government. “This is very serious work that the country needs to address, and we especially need our business leaders to take the initiative to root out discrimination in their policies, practices, products and services.”