Krisanne Vaillancourt Murphy, M.T.S.

Krisanne Vaillancourt Murphy serves as the executive director of Catholic Mobilizing Network (CMN), where she oversees the organization’s strategic direction and priorities. Since 2017, Vaillancourt Murphy has championed CMN’s trailblazing mission to end the death penalty and advance justice solutions that align with Catholic values through restorative practices and approaches. She drives anti-death penalty and restorative justice formation programming through strategic initiatives, state and federal advocacy, and in collaboration with an extensive network of more than 30,000 advocates, including Catholic bishops, dioceses, state Catholic conferences, religious communities, lay ministry leaders, and people of goodwill from across the nation.

Vaillancourt Murphy has 30 years of experience working in national-level, faith-based policy advocacy. She is frequently quoted on matters of capital punishment and restorative justice in media sources such as the New York Times, CNN, OSV News, America Magazine, Aleteia, National Catholic Reporter, Catholic News Agency, EWTN News Nightly, USA Today, and is a regular contributor to Vatican News.

During 2004-2016, Vaillancourt Murphy served as the senior church relations staff at Bread for the World, a collective Christian voice urging U.S. decision-makers to end hunger at home and abroad. While there, she co-authored Advocating for Justice: An Evangelical Vision for Transforming Systems and Structures.

From 2003 to 2005, Vaillancourt Murphy served as the executive director of Witness for Peace and in the late 1990s she was an associate with the Latin America Working Group. In 1994, she served for a year in a faith-based domestic service program working alongside migrant farmworkers in Woodburn, Oregon.

Vaillancourt Murphy is a Social Innovator Fellow at the Institute for Ethics and the Common Good at Notre Dame and serves on the Board of Directors at Georgetown Visitation Preparatory School. She has a Masters in Theology degree from Boston College (formerly Weston Jesuit School of Theology in Cambridge, Massachusetts). Krisanne, her husband Jay have three children and reside in Washington, DC.