TED Community » Ian Murphy

About Me

Ian Murphy has more than a decade of experience as a senior manager in marketing, communications and public relations. During this time, he designed and managed a diverse portfolio of projects and promotions for companies ranging from Fortune 100 corporations to entrepreneurial start-ups, small businesses and non-profit organizations. His experience includes a very strong record of innovative marketing and awareness campaigns and the generation of billions of positive media impressions for clients and employers.

Ian currently serves as the Director of Communications for the Stevens Center for Innovation at the University of Southern California and the Executive Producer of TEDxUSC. USC Stevens is a university wide resource that helps USC innovators make maximum impact with their idea beyond traditional academic means. They execute this mission by identifying, nurturing, protecting, and transferring the most exciting innovations from USC to the market, and in turn, provides a central connection for industry seeking cutting edge innovations in which to invest. Furthermore, the USC Stevens Center develops the innovator as well as innovations, through educational programs, community-building events, and showcase opportunities.

Ian began his career as an intern and then employee at a boutique PR firm in Washington D.C. specializing in congressional relations, aerospace and non-profit media and event management. His duties included media relations, building press lists, writing press releases and compiling and editing the 1998 & 1999 Who's Who in Congress and Who's Who in the Pentagon directories for Army Times Publishing Company. He moved on to manage and train direct sales teams for two direct promotions and sales companies in Washington, DC and Baltimore, MD. He returned to Federal City Communications in November of 2001 as a media relations account manager and later Vice President of Media Relations representing a handful of well known commercial aerospace companies.

In 2004, Ian publicized the first private flights to space for the X PRIZE Foundation. Reuters News Service reported later that only one other story that year had greater coverage than the winning of the $10 million Ansari X PRIZE. In January of 2005, as Director of Communications for the X PRIZE Foundation, he helped design, produce and promote the first two Wirefly X PRIZE Cup events and the $2.5 million Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge. In addition to events and public relations, his duties included producing and editing all video material, podcasts and websites, as well as, conducting media research for new prizes for fuel efficiency, genomics, nanotechnology, education and the environment. In late 2006, he successfully publicized the largest medical prize in history -- the $10 million Archon X PRIZE for Genomics. In the past decade, his work has generated tens of thousands of stories resulting in more than 6 billion media impressions. These impressions are estimated to be in excess of $150 million of advertising value equivalency and resulted in more than $50 million in donations and sponsorship for his clients and employers.