Peggy Murphy, Ph.D.
Senior Advisor, Sustainability
Peggy Murphy is a sustainability strategy leader with more than 25 years of experience turning corporate sustainability commitments into enterprise targets, governance structures, and plans that hold up in the boardroom. She has built sustainability functions from the ground up twice, at a Fortune 500 consumer goods company and a global logistics provider, and has reported directly to boards, executives, and customers on sustainability performance at both companies.
Dr. Murphy recently served as Global VP of Sustainability at PSA BDP, a global logistics provider, where she set measurable corporate sustainability targets and embedded sustainability into the company's culture and day-to-day operations. She worked directly with PSA BDP's customers to support their sustainability initiatives and targets and identified new sustainability product offerings across chemical and non-chemical markets, positioning PSA BDP as a sustainable partner rather than just a service provider. As part of this work, she developed a customer-facing Scope 3 transportation GHG emissions reporting tool, giving customers a practical way to measure and act on their own freight-related emissions.
Previously, Peggy spent 24 years at Kimberly-Clark Corporation in a series of sustainability leadership roles, most recently as Sustainability Strategy Leader for NA Consumer Products, covering brands including Kleenex®, Huggies®, Scott®, and Kotex®. Throughout her tenure, she designed, implemented, and delivered organizational change centered on sustainability for both internal and external stakeholders, defining the business case for sustainability strategy at the corporate and business unit levels. She built and ran an external Sustainability Advisory Board of seven global experts, secured her CEO's participation at the first meeting each year to ensure top-down support, and led a global sustainability council spanning roughly 25 business units. That groundwork translated into results: she certified Kimberly-Clark's first personal care mill to the Forest Stewardship Council standard, enabling FSC® claims on its diaper products, and brokered a virtual wind power purchasing agreement that covered all energy use for the company's consumer tissue brands, generating $8M in new revenue in its first year alone.
Dr. Murphy holds a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from the University of Pennsylvania and a bachelor's degree in chemistry from Colgate University, with postdoctoral research conducted at the Université du Maine in Le Mans, France. Her work has been recognized externally, including being named a Sustainability Champion by the Wisconsin Sustainable Business Council and one of Environmental Leader's Top 75 Global Environmental Leaders.
Education
Ph.D. – Physical Chemistry, University of Pennsylvania
B.A. – Chemistry, Colgate University
(Minor: Mathematics)
Community Leadership
Board Member, Gordon Bubolz Nature Preserve
Member, City of Appleton Climate Task Force
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