Jill Allen Murray Featured in National Journal

Jill Allen Murray Featured in National Journal

Consulting Game: Jill Allen Murray

Christopher Snow Hopkins - 4/15/2011

Leaving Capitol Hill for the private sector usually means shifting to a less holistic view of society. Not so for Jill Allen Murray.

Murray is the newest senior policy and advocacy director at the Sheridan Group, whose clients embody “a social-change com­ponent.” The firm is a “unique place,” she says, where consultants can assemble a roster of clients based on their commitment to social change.

Murray arrives on K Street after working for then-Rep. Dan Maffei, D-N.Y., who was narrowly defeated in November by Republican Ann Marie Buerkle. As Maffei’s chief of staff, Murray was his principal adviser on legislative affairs, personnel, constituent relations, and the D.C. advocacy community. She also oversaw Maffei’s work on the Financial Services Committee.

Before joining Maffei’s office, Murray was a wayfaring political operative. During the 2004 election cycle, she was a foot soldier in John Edwards’s presidential campaign, hopscotching around the Midwest on behalf of the ebullient Democratic senator from North Carolina. When Sen. John Kerry, the eventual Democratic nominee, tapped Edwards as his running mate, Murray relocated to St. Louis, where she helped elect Democrat Russ Carnahan to the seat vacated by Rep. Dick Gephardt.

Murray, 34, grew up outside of Syracuse, N.Y., the daughter of an accountant and an elementary-school teacher. After majoring in art and sociology at Colgate University, she interned in the office of Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., and waited tables at the Birchmere Music Hall in Alexandria, Va.,  before joining the legislative staff of what is now called NARAL Pro-Choice America. Murray later returned to upstate New York to earn a master’s degree in public administration from Syracuse University’s Maxwell School.

Now that she has two young children, Murray is “not moving anywhere,” she says. In Washington, she is active in the Foundry United Methodist Church, and she hopes to convert a former Methodist church site into “permanent supportive housing,” she says, which inverts the “typical” prescription for chronic homelessness.

“We all know that the homeless population is often dual-diagnosed—they are usually dependent on drugs or alcohol or have mental issues,” Murray notes. “The critical thing is that they provide the housing first.… We tend to think that you get a job or get rid of these problems first, then you put a roof over your head. [Our church’s] belief is that you put a roof over somebody’s head and then provide them with resources to get them back on their feet.”