“I can’t seem to stay away from Nashville for very long,” Murphy said. “Whenever I leave, I am pretty ready to come back, so I went home for a couple of weeks and came back here to work for the summer. I was really interested in working at this nonprofit because I liked the flexibility this job would allow me but I also liked the mission of it.

“You’re not just promoting a product… you’re actually doing something that could help better people’s lives.”

Murphy primarily focuses her attention on public relations and marketing for the center, which helps refugees establish a solid foundation for their new lives in the United States. Here, Murphy has opened her eyes to the city of Nashville, an experience that she said has become a welcome escape from the Vanderbilt norm.

“I really wanted to get to know more aspects of the Nashville community that I don’t necessarily encounter in my daily life in the ‘Vanderbubble’,” Murphy said. “It has given me a great opportunity to step outside of my normal activities while I’m here.

“It is pretty incredible because every day you have people of all different nationalities coming into the center. I heard someone the other day that was a biomedical engineer in his home country and is applying for minimum wage jobs here — it’s interesting hearing how hard that is for people who have to go through that.”

Murphy’s job for the summer is to spread the word about the center to Middle Tennessee, something that she said empowers both the refugees and Murphy herself.

“The center is doing a lot of incredible things, but they don’t have anyone who can showcase them,” she said. “They don’t have anyone who can send out email newsletters, work on their website or help the community know what’s going on. I think it’s great because the whole center is the Nashville International Center for Empowerment — each person’s job at the center is empowering someone else. My job is to empower the staff to be able to effectively do their job and empowering the center to be able to showcase what it’s doing. In turn, it’s empowering each of these different refugees to establish fulfilling lives. It’s a neat place to be.”

In her spare time, Murphy continues to meet with Vanderbilt officials and student government associates to jumpstart VSG’s initiatives for the fall semester, which include a new athletic rewards system for students, a sleeker Vandy Van design and the Commodore Cabs program.

“The Commodore Cabs program is one that we’re really excited about that we’ve been working on testing this summer,” Murphy said. “Students use their Commodore Card to pay for taxi cabs, and they can split fares with up to three people. They’ve outfitted a few cabs so far and we’re just working out the kinks so that every Allied, Nashville and Diamond cab will be suited up for students for the fall. We’ve also been working a lot with Vandy Fanatics to get our new athletics rewards program off the ground and just finished our designs to redesign the Vandy Van logo.”

For Murphy, the ultimate reward she gets out of her service is simple: She wants people to love Nashville as much as she does.

“I think the most rewarding part of being president is that I love every minute of my Vanderbilt experience,” Murphy said. “I am so thankful for that, and I get to be in a job where I help everyone else love their Vanderbilt experience just as much as I do. I think the whole idea of VSG and student government is to empower students…our role is to provide students with services and programming that help students fully enjoy their college experience and get the most out of it.”