The Negotiating Your Salary and Raises Workshop with Evelyn Murphy took place on April 16th, 2019. The goals for the workshop were for Fletcher students in attendance to be committed, comfortable, and confident negotiating for fair pay and benefits. Evelyn taught students that salary negotiation is about being objective about your market worth, being persuasive, and thinking strategically. She encouraged students to do their research and practice their five-minute pitch for justifying their worth. Finally, Evelyn explained the ramifications of the gender wage gap and noted that females who complete graduate programs can lose around one to two million dollars from the gender wage gap. She therefore asked Fletcher students to say out loud to themselves before negotiations, “I want my million dollars!” Breakfast was included.
Some of the feedback from the 45 participants in attendance included:
- “I found the workshop very useful and am very thankful to LEADS for organizing it.”
- “The workshop’s best element was to focus on knowing our worth before we apply for a job and then negotiate our salary.”
- “Thank you for organizing the workshop. I really enjoyed it and especially the role-play.”
- “I was happy to provide the other side as an employer in the role-play and feel that Evelyn’s workshop was brilliant to get perspectives in salary in negotiations.”
- “To know when to actually talk about salary, the right time, was very useful.”
Evelyn F. Murphy
Evelyn Murphy is Founder and President of The WAGE Project, Inc. a national, grassroots activist organization dedicated to eliminating the gender wage gap and author of Getting Even: Why Women Don’t Get Paid Like Men and What to Do About It, published by Simon and Schuster in 2005. She ia Director of SBLI USA Life Insurance Company headquartered in New York City,; Shenandoah Life Insurance Company in Roanoke, VA; a Director of Citizens Energy Corporation, Co-Chair of Boston Mayor Marty Walsh’s Women’s Workforce Council, and Trustee of the Economic Empowerment Trust Fund.
The WAGE Project, Inc (WAGE) has helped young women on over 400 campuses in 49 states throughout America begin their careers getting paid fairly through highly interactive salary negotiation workshops. WAGE has also conducted salary negotiation workshops for women at YWCAs, through the mayor’s office for working women of Boston; through the Governor’s office for working women in Montana, and for women CPAs, surgeons, women lawyers, librarians, pharmacists, scientists, academics, administrators, and executives.
Evelyn Murphy earned a BA from Duke University in mathematics; a MA in economics from Columbia University; and a PhD in economics from Duke University.
In 1991, Evelyn Murphy became Managing Director of Brown, Rudnick, Freed & Gesmer, a New England law firm. Several years later, she was recruited to be Executive Vice President of Blue Cross Blue Shied of Massachusetts. She served on corporate boards including Bay State HMO, Blue Cross, Blue Shield of Massachusetts; Shawmut National Banks of Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut, Fleet National Bank, Fleet Mortgage Company, and Fleet Credit Card Corporation.
In her civic role, she is a founding Director of The Commonwealth Institute; on the Board of Visitors, The Graduate School of Duke University; a Director of the Women’s Studies Research Center at Brandeis University; Honorary Chair of the Lost Coin Women’s Fund, and on the advisory committees of the Center for Women and Work at UMass Lowell; and the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy at UMass Boston.
Dr. Murphy is the recipient of eleven honorary degrees, the distinguished alumni award of The Graduate School of Duke University, and over one hundred national, state, and community awards. Listed in Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in American Women, Who’s Who in the World, and Who’s Who in American Politics, she is a frequent keynote speaker on women’s issues, politics, and business. In her spare time, she has run the Boston Marathon several times and can be seen in the bleachers of Fenway Park cheering for the Boston Red Sox.