Dear Members of the Yale Community,
We write to share news that Stephen C. Murphy, vice president for finance and chief financial officer, has decided to retire in June 2026. Having served our university with dedication for a quarter-century, he will be greatly missed.
Steve first came to campus as a student in Yale College, from which he graduated in 1987. He returned to his alma mater after spending 14 years in the private sector as a management consultant and a financial leader for technology and consumer goods companies around the globe.
During his tenure at Yale, Steve has provided both steady and dynamic leadership of the university’s finances. He has worked with multiple generations of administrators to advance our academic mission through financial strategy, insight, services, and advice. Across these efforts, he has championed integrity, foresight, and a positive work environment.
Steve’s leadership has concentrated on building effective and enduring change, helping lay much of the foundation for how the university manages its finances today. Those reforms include establishing the Budget Advisory Group, the Business Operations organization, the Institutional Standards of Conduct, and the guiding principles for both university operations and our financial management organizational model.
In addition to financial modernization, Steve has emphasized financial education. He made the annual budget book available to the campus community, presented frequently on understanding Yale’s budget, contributed to the publicly available Funding Yale website, and sponsored the creation of a financial training curriculum for staff campus-wide.
Before serving in his current position, Steve began his career at Yale in 2001 as lead administrator for the Office of Cooperative Research, and then rose through a series of financial and administrative leadership roles. He is a member of the board of trustees for Yale New Haven Hospital, a fellow of Berkeley College, and a former trustee of Saint Thomas More Catholic Chapel and Center at Yale, the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art in London, and The Foote School in New Haven.
More recently, Steve has helped secure Yale’s financial outlook by serving as co-sponsor of the OneFinance strategic initiative to bolster the university’s financial management. He has also played a key role in formulating plans for how to respond to the increased endowment tax and cuts to federal research funding.
Steve leaves a legacy of recruiting and developing talent, pursuing ambitious goals, and continually reflecting on and refining the university’s financial stewardship. His focus on building robust teams and fostering a positive work environment has positioned Finance to continue supporting Yale’s mission well into the future.
We are grateful for Steve’s decades of service to our university and for his commitment to supporting a smooth transition in the coming months. We will communicate additional details of this leadership transition soon. In the meantime, please join us in thanking Steve for his service and in wishing him well in his next chapter.
Sincerely,
Maurie McInnis
President
Professor of the History of Art
Geoff Chatas
Senior Vice President for Operations