Campus Profile: Kelsey Murphy
Graduation year: 2017
Majors/minors:
· Majors: Marketing and Entrepreneurial Studies
· Minors: Finance and Innovation Engineering
Hometown: Cincinnati, OH
Activities: Delta Sigma Pi – VP of Alumni Relations; Manresa 2015 – Small Group Leader
A funny quirk about you: When I concentrate really hard, I get the hiccups :)
First of all, can you describe a little bit about the app, benobe, to us?
Of course! benobe, is a career marketing services company with a career marketing technology platform. We are designing applications (both web and mobile) to help people, specifically students, explore careers by connecting them with the real-world career information they need, and the employers/academic institutions they may be interested in.
Our benobe app (available for free on the Apple app store, and available for free at www.benobe.com) is designed to introduce users to careers through basic career information, as well as curated information from our Career Storytellers. These Storytellers, who are our clients, include Employers and Academic Institutions (for example, Xavier) who enhance our data by providing career stories related to their organization or experience. Career stories are provided in a multimedia format, such as videos, and are intended to engage, educate and inspire our users. Career stories told by domain experts differentiate our app from other career exploration tools as they allow our content to be unique to benobe, dynamic, and ever evolving.
What made you want to make this app? What value do you hope it brings to students who are looking into different college paths?
The co-founders of the app are my mom (Julie Jones Murphy ’85) and Jeff Carter. As soon as my mom introduced me to the benobe app concept, I was hooked. I became a founding team member when benobe was 1 of 10 companies chosen out of 150 to participate in the OCEAN Accelerator (a 6-month business model evolvement program and the first faith-based business accelerator in the US).
I became a part of the team because I believe in the value the company will bring to students. As a current college student who still is unsure of what I want to be when I grow up, I understand the struggle that many high school students and even more college students have today. I truly believe we can help students more easily explore and engage with career options, pathways and opportunities while reversing the scary statistics of unnecessary student loan debt, college dropouts, and high employment/underemployment rates after graduation.
In the fall 2015 Xavier Magazine, you discussed how “working with [your] mom is both ‘a blessing’ and an education in and of itself.” How has working with your mom changed (or not changed) your how you see her?
Honestly, I’ve always admired my mom. I am frequently asked the question, “What’s it like working with your Mom?” And, as I said in the interview, I feel very blessed. My mom has always been, and will continue to be, my daily dose of inspiration. She’s truly lived a life worth emulating, and I’m blessed to not only work for her, but to learn from her each and every day.
How have you managed to juggle working on developing the app with all the other demands student life puts on you?
To keep it simple, I make it happen because I have passion. Passion for benobe as a company, passion for the potential and the amount of impact our app could (and will) have one day, and passion for the entrepreneurial/innovative world we operate in.