SARAH MURRAY
Veteran financial journalist regularly sought out to moderate high profile events
Sarah is a long-time contributor and former staff journalist at the Financial Times. She also writes for Stanford Social Innovation Review, the Economist Group and others. While she can tackle a wide range of subjects, she has several specialist areas, including responsible business, sustainable finance, global development, strategic philanthropy, healthcare and the future of work.
Sarah Murray is a long-time Financial Times contributor, former FT staff journalist and specialist writer on sustainable development, the future of cities, impact investing and philanthropy. She is author of the FT Moral Money Forum reports, a quarterly series of in-depth features that examine critical sustainability issues in business and finance. She is also a regular contributor for Stanford Social Innovation Review, the Economist Group and others.
Exclusively represented by BrightSight Speakers, Sarah works on writing projects with universities, foundations, think-tanks, non-profits and others, including the Kresge Foundation (articles for its centennial celebration), Blue Meridien Partners, Myriad USA (Insights profiles), The Denver Foundation, the McNulty Foundation (SSIR feature profiling its 2022 Unusual Pioneers fellows), a CoGenerate (formerly Encore.org) report on intergenerational impact, Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors (reports including Social Compact In A Changing World), and the UN International Labor Organization (100th anniversary report for the Global Commission on the Future of Work). For Stanford Graduate Business School she writes profiles of Stanford Impact Founder Fellows.
Sarah is editor / senior writer on books on philanthropy and impact investing, including New York Times bestseller Giving 2.0 by Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen and Making Money Moral by former Rockefeller Foundation CEO Judith Rodin and Saadia Madsbjerg.
Sarah’s work has appeared in publications including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, the Economist, The Guardian, the South China Morning Post and through organizations such as the World Economic Forum and the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation. She has worked as a journalist in the US, the UK, Hong Kong, Vietnam and South Africa.
Sarah is author of two non-fiction books, Making an Exit and Moveable Feasts, which in 2008 was selected as one of JPMorgan Private Bank’s 10 summer “must read” books. Her awards include a 2009 fellowship at Yaddo, the leading American artists’ residency, and a 2014 Boehm Media Fellowship.
In 2016, Sarah helped launch FT Investing for Good (now the Moral Money Summit), a global conference series from the Financial Times exploring the role of business and capital markets in helping solve complex social and environmental challenges. She shaped themes, developed panel topics and brought together speakers with the expertise and insights to create informative and thought-provoking sessions.
Before joining the Financial Times in London, Sarah worked in Hong Kong at the South China Morning Post and Reuters. In 1993, based in Hanoi, she helped lead the launch of the Vietnam Economic Times, an English-language business magazine. She has also worked as a freelance journalist in South Africa. She now lives in New York City.
Speech topics
Event Moderator & Speaker
Sarah is an experienced speaker and moderator and has been a content developer for major events run by FT Live, the global conferences division of the Financial Times, notably all the conferences of FT Investing for Good, the event series she developed and led between 2016 and 2020. With a highly informal style and a journalist’s curiosity, she leads dynamic, informative and entertaining discussions. She does not use scripts, lists of questions or formal formats but lets the conversation flow towards the most interesting points that emerge on stage.
To frame the discussion, formulate appropriate questions and ensure speakers feel they will be able to raise the issues they care most about she invites them to send her three or four key points ahead of the event.
Books
Making an Exit: From the Magnificent to the Macabre---How We Dignify the Dead
"Not only a fascinating travelogue but also a personal meditation on loss and fate...There is a wealth to discover within these pages."―The Economist
Moveable Feasts: From Ancient Rome to the 21st Century, the Incredible Journeys of the Food We Eat
Today the average meal has traveled thousands of miles before reaching the dinner table. How on earth did this happen? Through delightful anecdotes and astonishing facts, Moveable Feasts tells the stories.