Julie Murphree

Julie Murphree was born in Mesa, Arizona to Pat and Pennee Murphree. Pat, an Arizona native, and Pennee, an Iowa farm girl, were in the hay baling business when Julie, their second child, arrived.

Julie’s parents created an idyllic and loving family setting for her and from it emerged an idealistic and romantic outlook on life especially as it related to family. She was always encouraged to pursue her dreams. One of her earliest childhood memories was the excitement of getting to sleep in the living room on the pull-out couch with her older brother. It was like a camp out. On cool spring evenings their mom would leave the main front door open with only the screen door separating them from the outside world. They would fall asleep to the rhythmic croaking of the frogs and to the smell of fresh cut alfalfa.

Most of Julie’s impressionable growing up years were in Maricopa where the family moved to manage Pat’s sister’s cotton farm. From first grade to her sophomore year in high school, Julie grew up on the farm with her three brothers Brent, Patrick and Curt.

Growing up on a 1200-acre farm with her three brothers left plenty of room for a wide variety of adventures including exploring, playing sports, riding motorcycles and swimming in the ditches or sumps. They even found time to build forts and reenact the battles of imagined ancient history.

After graduating from Gilbert High School in 1980, Julie attended Arizona State University obtaining her Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism in 1984. With degree in hand, she launched into her journalism and marketing career beginning with small advertising and marketing firms in Tempe in the first few years. One of her favorite weekend pastimes were taking friends back out to the farm and driving them around to see where all her growing up adventures took place.

She eventually landed a staff writer position with the Institute of Supply Management’s magazine Inside Supply Management. Once named the magazine’s editor, she served in that position until 2000 when she was lured away by a magazine publisher to launch a new magazine, Supply & Demand Chain Executive. As editor-in-chief for the magazine through 2004, Julie spearheaded the creation, development and management of one of the more successful business-to-business magazines during the Internet’s early dot com era.

While in charge of Supply & Demand Chain Executive, Julie developed a supply and demand chain model with the help of the research and academic community that is still used today to help companies understand their supply and demand chain processes and the functional areas they must enable with modern-day technology.

Today, Julie's core career endeavors involve media and marketing management in addition to speaking and training in the areas of diplomacy and supply & demand chain management. She has more than 16 years of experience as a journalist tracking, reporting, speaking and writing on negotiations and supply & demand chain management issues. Especially during her time as a magazine editor, she has enthusiastically spoken at countless conferences and to major corporations on a variety of topics relating to supply and demand chain management, in addition to other critical business topics.

In addition to corporate speaking engagements, Julie continues to serve as founding editor and advisor to Supply & Demand Chain Executive. Because the two magazines Julie managed cover the purchasing and supply management profession, Julie’s domain expertise allows her to maintain most of her client base in this arena.!