Vanda McMurtry joined Parven Pomper Strategies Inc. as Senior Vice President in February of 2008. McMurtry brings to the position a wealth of experience in government, having served more than 15 years in personal offices and on committee staffs in the House of Representatives and the Senate. In the private sector, he has nearly a decade and a half of experience as a senior corporate executive and a high-level administrator at research universities.

Before joining PPS, McMurtry was Vice President for Government and Community Affairs at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. He came to the job from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, where he served in a similar capacity. In these posts, from 2004 to 2008, Van McMurtry reported to the presidents of the universities and managed their relations with federal, state and local governments and a vast array of community organizations, businesses, and non-profit institutions. Among the issues on which he spent substantial time at the Ivy League schools were federal and state funding of research in medicine and engineering, technology transfer for economic development, and federal regulation and taxation of higher education.

For almost a dozen years prior to his stint as an academic administrator, from 1992 to 2004, McMurtry worked as a top-ranking corporate executive. The position of Senior Vice President for Federal Government Relations at Aetna Inc. in Hartford, Connecticut, put him at the forefront of the company’s interaction with Washington, D.C., and with sovereign governments around the world. Van McMurtry focused on health care reform, financial services modernization, barriers to international trade in services, and federal regulation and taxation of insurance. He reported to the Chief Executive Officer and served his entire tenure at Aetna as a member of the Management Group, a committee of twelve senior executives whose purpose was to advise the Chief Executive Officer on issues arising in the day-to-day operation of the company.

McMurtry’s experience in the Congress was capped by a four-year term, from 1988 to 1992, as Staff Director and Chief Counsel of the Committee on Finance during the final years of the chairmanship of Senator Lloyd Bentsen (D-TX). Prior to becoming staff director, he was employed by the Senator as Legislative Director for a three-year period, from 1985 to 1988. Energy production and taxation, along with environmental regulation of the energy industry, together constituted a major professional emphasis for McMurtry during his time with Senator Bentsen.

Van McMurtry began his service on congressional staff in 1976 under the tutelage of Representative Lee Hamilton (D-IN). Staying with the Congressman until 1984, he was first Legislative Assistant, then Legislative Director, then a member of the professional staff of the Joint Economic Committee, a panel that Representative Hamilton chaired. After leaving the House but before moving on to the Senate, McMurtry spent a year in private law practice with the firm of Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen and Hamilton in Washington, D.C.

McMurtry is a graduate, summa cum laude, of the University of California at Irvine. He has earned a master’s degree and a doctorate in philosophy from Cornell University, a master’s degree in public administration from The Johns Hopkins University, and a law degree from Georgetown University. McMurtry is admitted to practice law in Maryland and the District of Columbia. He lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife, Maria Emma Vergara.