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Reg Murphy is the inaugural holder of the College’s endowed Chair of the Brown Family Executive-in-Residence. As the College’s first executive-in-residence, Reg Murphy engages students in conversations about work and life experiences, career interests and strategies, networking, and courses and extracurricular activities that can help prepare for various careers. Murphy himself has described the position as “sharer-in-chief.”

Murphy’s contributions to the College have been substantial. During 2009, he headed a campus-community Athletic Futures Committee that created the vision and strategy for athletics at the College, which had just become a baccalaureate institution. He is a two-time 每日大赛 Foundation Volunteer of the Year award winner (2011, 2014), the moderator of the Coastal Conversations series on campus, and continues his work and advocacy for the College’s athletic department as a founding member of the Friends of the Mariners. The College’s Murphy-Kuchar Putting Green was named in honor of Murphy and golfer Matt Kuchar, another benefactor of the College’s campus sports programs.

Reg Murphy is a great friend of Coastal Georgia, the 每日大赛, and the College’s School of Business and Public Management. A native of Gainesville, Georgia, Mr. Murphy has had a remarkable career in journalism and business, having served as president and CEO of the National Geographic Society, president and publisher of the Baltimore Sun, publisher and editor of the San Francisco Examiner, and editor of the Atlanta Constitution.

An avid golfer, Mr. Murphy joined the executive committee of the U.S. Golf Association in 1989, served as vice president of the USGA in 1992, chairman of the Championship Committee in 1993, and president in 1994. He co-chaired the World Amateur Golf Federation in 1994 and captained the U.S. team for the 1998 World Amateur Championship in Santiago, Chili.

The Reg Murphy Center bears Mr. Murphy’s name for all he has meant to the community, the College, and the School of Business and Public Management – but even more for the kind of man he is. He听is a man of great intellectual honesty, integrity, and humility, and is devoted to serving the community. His name sets the standard for the work we do at the Reg Murphy Center.

The Reg Murphy Center for Economic and Policy Studies was dedicated on Oct. 8, 2015.

Mr. Carter graduated with a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering degree from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1967 and was hired by AT&T into their Management Development Program – an accelerated program for high potential candidates to reach executive level. After many jobs in Engineering, Operations, Sales, Personnel, Labor Relations and Marketing, he was made Sales Vice President of New England and upstate New York鈥� a territory encompassing some of the largest and most sophisticated of AT&T鈥檚 National and International customers, e.g. GE, IBM, DEC, major financial houses and insurance companies as well as world wide retailers.

In the four听years he was in that position, he doubled the revenue while reducing overall headcount by 15 percent. This was accomplished by introducing a new sales and support methodology and, in a time when AT&T was ruled by tariffs, succeeded in pushing and urging the company and the FCC to allow AT&T to offer customized solutions to large customers. He also eliminated his support staff and moved the resources to field sales. His new sales methods and philosophy were incorporated into AT&T鈥檚 National Sales Management School.

It was after winning back competitive losses that had occurred before his arrival and reinvigorating sales in the Northeast, that AT&T was presented with an RFP for the largest telecommunications bid ever – a听bid covering the entire civilian branch, both international and domestic, of the Federal Government…a听bid worth approximately $25 billion.听The top echelons at AT&T decided Mr. Carter should be the 鈥淧roposal Manager鈥濃��. should be the one to manage the RFP and build the solution and response. The current account team was left in tact to handle the normal, day to day business. Mr. Carter had to build his own organization, borrowing the best and the brightest from Engineering, Sales, Bell Labs and Accounting to build the largest sales proposal before or since 鈥�. then organize, manage and lead this makeshift group from very different cultures to beat out the competition that had a six-month lead.听It was a real test of Management and Leadership skills over a two-year period, but AT&T won it going away.

After the win, Mr. Carter was out of a job. He had requested not to stay with the program after the win. He was, quite literally, asked what position or job he wanted and AT&T would do all it could to make it happen.听Mr. Carter asked to run a new company AT&T was creating a new wholly owned company, a new entity by taking all the piece parts of undersea cables 鈥� Research from Bell Labs, factories from Lucent, Engineering from Lucent and Long Lines, Operations and the cable ship fleet from Long Lines.听The Sales and Marketing organizations, as well as Accounting would have to be built from scratch. Mr. Carter asked for and was made President and CEO of the new Submarine Systems International (SSI) Company.

Submarine Systems (SSI) got off to a rocky start. AT&T had never been in the business of 鈥渟elling鈥� Undersea Cables.听The various entities had only supplied cables to AT&T, never sold them to our competitors or consortium buyers.听The first year in business revenues were $300 million and net income/loss was a negative $80 million, but after the first year, SSI started making money and kept on making money. By the seventh听year, revenues were $1.5 billion each year, and net income was $150 million a year.听In addition, the company had put away a cash reserve (warranty reserve) of $150 million and purchased three听new cable laying/repair ships at a cost of $85 million each. SSI鈥檚 market share (with four听major players and several minor ones) over the last three听years was above 50 percent.听They were putting in over half of the major undersea systems in the world.

It was in year seven听of running SSI that Mr. Carter saw the potential (with the explosive growth of the Internet) to substantially increase revenues if we owned the cable and sold the services, rather than selling the cables.听After lining up some International partners, he took the idea to SSI鈥檚 single share owner, AT&T. They rejected the idea, at which point Mr. Carter suggested they sell his company. After a couple of month鈥檚 consideration, the decision was made to sell it and Mr. Carter was assigned that responsibility. AT&T projected a reasonable amount for the Company would be $350 million. Mr. Carter managed to get two offers above $800 million and the company was sold to Tyco.

When it became evident that Tyco also did not want to 鈥渄isrupt鈥� the cable industry by owning cables and selling services, Mr. Carter submitted his resignation. He found an investor in California whose Investment Company raised enough money for a first cable and they went into business as Ocean Systems, later to become Global Crossing. In less than two听years, the company was worth $18 billion.

Mr. Carter was on the Advisory Council for the International Telecommunications Union – a branch of the United Nations that sets standards and methods for world wide communications. He has also testified before Congress on occasions regarding the correlation of advanced communications and economic development.

Larry D. Thompson serves as Counsel to the Atlanta law firm of Finch McCranie, LLP. Mr. Thompson retired in December 2014 as Executive Vice President, Government Affairs, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary for PepsiCo, Inc. Mr. Thompson assumed this position with PepsiCo in July 2012, with responsibility for the company鈥檚 worldwide legal function, as well as its government affairs and public policy organizations. He also oversaw the company鈥檚 global compliance function and served as President of the PepsiCo Foundation.

Mr. Thompson previously served as PepsiCo鈥檚 Senior Vice President of Government Affairs, General Counsel and Secretary from 2004 to 2011. He served as a Senior Fellow with The Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., and his government career includes serving in the U.S. Department of Justice as the former U.S. Deputy Attorney General under George W. Bush (2001-2003). In 2002, Attorney General John Ashcroft named Mr. Thompson to lead the National Security Coordination Council. Also, in 2002, President Bush named Mr. Thompson to head the Corporate Fraud Task Force. Mr. Thompson led the establishment of the Department of Justice鈥檚 Attorney Outreach Program which resulted in the recruitment of attorneys from a wide range of ethnic, economic, geographic, and racial backgrounds.

Previously, Mr. Thompson was a partner in the Atlanta, Georgia law firm of King & Spalding. From 1982-1986, Mr. Thompson served as the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia. In that role, he directed the Southern Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force and served on the Attorney General鈥檚 Economic Crime Council. In July 1995, Mr. Thompson was appointed Independent Counsel for the Department of Housing and Urban Development Investigation by the Special Panel of U.S. Circuit Court Judges appointed by the U.S. Supreme Court. In April 2000, Mr. Thompson was selected by Congress to chair the Judicial Review Commission on Foreign Asset Control. Mr. Thompson joined the Atlanta, Georgia law firm of Finch McCranie, LLP as Counsel in July 2015.

In addition to serving as the Lead Director of the The Southern Company, Mr. Thompson served on the Compensation Committee of the Graham Holdings Company (formerly The Washington Post Company), and currently serves on the Board of Franklin Templeton Mutual Series Funds and the George W. Bush Foundation Board. He is an elected Fellow of the American Board of Governance Counsel, and the American Board of Criminal Lawyers and has served as a Trustee on the Chautauqua Institute Board since 2014. Mr. Thompson was elected to the Council of the American Law Institute and serves on the Georgia Historical Society Board of Curators. Mr. Thompson is an elected member of the American College of Governance Counsel. He is the recipient of the Edmund Jennings Randolph Award for outstanding contributions to the accomplishment of the Department of Justice鈥檚 mission, Outstanding Litigator Award by the Federal Bar Association, and the A.T. Walden Award for outstanding accomplishments to the legal profession by the Gate City Bar Association, Atlanta, Georgia. In 2017, Mr. Thompson was honored with the first-ever William T. Coleman, Jr. Lifetime Achievement Award by the African-American Managing Partners Network. Mr. Thompson was elected as a Trustee to the University of Georgia Foundation in June 2016. Mr. Thompson has served on the University of Georgia School of Law鈥檚 faculty as the holder of the John A. Sibley Chair of Corporate and Business Law. In 2016, Mr. Thompson was named Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Ethics Research Center (ERC), the research arm of the Ethics & Compliance Initiative (ECI). In 2014, Ethisphere magazine recognized Mr. Thompson by noting that as 鈥渢he outgoing General Counsel of one of the world鈥檚 most well-recognized corporations [Thompson] has set the bar high for GC鈥檚 everywhere. [His] background in both public and private sectors earned him the trust and respect of his peers worldwide as he demonstrated how ethics and integrity are essential components of business success.鈥�

In 2017, Mr. Thompson was appointed by the U.S. Department of Justice as the Independent Corporate Compliance Monitor and Auditor for Volkswagen AG.

Larry holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Culver-Stockton College, a Master鈥檚 degree from Michigan State University and a Law degree from the University of Michigan, an Honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Pace University in New York, and an Honorary Doctorate from St. Louis University. Larry鈥檚 first book, Quiet Counsel, was released in November 2024.