David Murphy

Assistant Provost, Office of Innovation/IDEA Center, Executive Director for Student Entrepreneurship and the ESTEEM Graduate Program, Faculty

Email:  dmurph12@nd.edu
Phone: 574-631-5667

David Murphy serves as Assistant Provost, Office of Innovation/IDEA Center, and Executive Director of the ESTEEM Graduate Program, Student Entrepreneurship and The Futures Group, having arrived at Notre Dame in November of 2011. David is also a member of the Faculty where he serves as an Associate Teaching Professor.

Prior to Notre Dame, David helped launch and then lead Better World Books (as President and CEO from inception to July, 2011), a global bookstore that harnesses the power of capitalism to bring literacy and opportunity to people around the world. An award-winning social entrepreneurship venture, Better World Books benefits thousands of charities and libraries here in the United States and around the world.

Under Murphy’s leadership, the Company scaled to a profitable, self-sustaining for-profit social enterprise with annual revenue approaching $80M; over 400 employees; operations in the US and in the UK; processing over 250,000 books per day; selling over 30,000 books per day; inventorying over 10 million used books across its four warehouse facilities; and becoming one of the top three online sellers of used books in the world (now having sold over 125 million books to over 85 million customers in its 20 year history).

Better World Books is representative of a new kind of organization whose fundamental business model is designed (and ultimately scaled) to drive meaningful social and environmental impact; to promote the common good. To this end, Better World Books has:

  • Contributed $35M to non-profit partners who work in literacy and education, including libraries.

  • Donated approximately 35M books to non-profit partners

  • Re-used or recycled more than 450M pounds of books, keeping them out of landfills

  • Received numerous awards for its environmental impact; notable distinction from the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) including winning the WasteWise Small Business Partner of the Year Award in 2011.

Prior to Better World Books, Murphy worked for or started up more than 14 companies – from multinationals to Wall Street to early stage ventures to startups (spanning eight industries in seven states and in Europe). He has raised more than $85M in capital to build and scale multiple organizations in the manufacturing, healthcare services, technology and online retail sectors – and through his leadership brought significant growth and scale to each.

David received his undergraduate degree (B.A. with high honors; Economics) from the University of Notre Dame and his graduate degree (MBA) from the Amos Tuck School at Dartmouth College. David is a founding member and board member of enFocus (South Bend, IN), serves on multiple Boards and Advisory Councils and is a member of the Leadership Atlanta Class of 2012. He was also a Southeastern Regional Finalist for the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 2011. David has been married to Mary Elizabeth Barrett Murphy (also a graduate of the University of Notre Dame) for 41 years and they have three grown children and seven grandchildren (and one on the way!).