Kyle Murphy, '15, was appointed as associate director of Multicultural Student Affairs (UNG) at the University of North Georgia (UNG) in August 2022, the same month he was honored as one of three recipients of UNG's Diversity Champion Award.
Murphy's history of leadership at UNG runs deep, starting as a UNG student when he was the president of the Latin American Student Organization (LASO). He then became involved with multiple Student Affairs organizations. His UNG student leadership experiences were a big factor in his wanting to return to UNG in May 2019.
Murphy is the committee chair for the Latinx graduation celebration planning committee and the Lavender graduation planning committee, two big events that are held every spring to help recognize different groups.
"I would define leadership as the ability to work with others and help them to reach a common goal," Murphy said.
Since joining UNG, his leadership experience reaches beyond the five UNG campuses. Murphy gives of his time as board chair for Georgia Familias Unidas, an organization that seeks to provide mutual aid to essential workers. He is also a board member for the Georgia Association of Latinx Elected Officials (GALEO) and also executive chair for the GALEO Leadership Council.
Murphy said his role as president of LASO was challenging and rewarding.
"My role as president of LASO was my first formal leadership role. It was challenging on multiple levels because we did not have a lot of engaged students and we had a very small budget," Murphy said. "We had to really work on building our relationships as an executive board team. We could be more effective when we engaged, and that helped us to navigate issues that we had and allowed us to hold events with the limited budget."
Murphy said his leadership style is more of a coaching style, something he learned from mentors. He has seen things he admired and crafted his own style.
"It's important as a leader to provide some direction, but also give people latitude to do things because that's how they learn. I do that a lot with my student organizations where I serve as adviser," Murphy said. "I see it not as my role to actually do things for them, but I can provide education, whether it's training on how to use a certain thing or help, maybe with logistics. But they're going to be the ones actually doing the event. That way they build experience and take that experience from UNG to whatever they do when they graduate."
