Colleen Murphy, Ph.D., is the vice president of Early Childhood Community Systems Building at Start Early. She has 30 years of experience working with early childhood programs at the local, state, and national levels including Head Start, Help Me Grow, MIECHV Home Visitation, Early Childhood Comprehensive Systems, Child Care Licensing, and Early Intervention. She has also provided technical assistance to communities and states on topics such as early childhood system building, data integration, measurement strategies, home visiting, and developmental screening initiatives.

Previously, Murphy was the Early Childhood Project Director at the National Institute for Children’s Health Quality (NICHQ), provided technical assistance to states across federal contracts, collaborated with private and federal technical assistance centers to support state grant implementation and to support states with data integration efforts at Applied Engineering Management (AEM), and spent 10 years working for the Utah Department of Health – Bureau of Child Development as the Early Childhood Utah program manager where she oversaw the development of Utah’s early childhood integrated data system.

Murphy holds a Doctorate of Philosophy in infant and early childhood with an emphasis on social and emotional development and two Master of Science degrees in management and organizational behavior from Benedictine University and a Master of Arts in infant and early childhood development with an emphasis in mental health and developmental disorders from Fielding Graduate University.