Life On The Pledge: Tanya & Niall Murphy

What drew Niall and Tanya to Founders Pledge and why they pledged

Niall and Tanya became pledgers in 2015 not long after Founders Pledge was founded. David Goldberg’s vision of leveraging the collective capability of entrepreneurs resonated, as did the analytical and strategic approach to scaling impact.

Tanya has always been deeply interested in how to turn intention into meaningful change, and was drawn to Founders Pledge’s rigorous impact thinking. They pledged to be able to support and reflect the Founders Pledge ethos, deliver meaningful outcomes with philanthropy, and participate with a community of impact oriented entrepreneurs.

How Founders Pledge changed how Niall and Tanya think about impact

For Tanya, Founders Pledge’s research and reports have shown that social impact can be assessed in tangible and comparable ways. While not convinced there is a single “right” methodology, Tanya views rigorous impact evaluation as a valid, powerful route alongside more qualitative approaches.

Founders Pledge has significantly shaped Niall’s understanding of impact, and provided visibility to a wide range of global challenges and solution pathways. FP has given Niall both optimism of achievability, and a sober appreciation of the scale and complexity challenges and global risks. Niall founded Morphosis inspired by discussions at the FP Winter Retreat in 2024.

What Tanya and Niall value most as members

They really enjoy the community of entrepreneurs Founder Pledge convenes, being surrounded by strong “can‑do” mindsets, and the access to thoughtful research, insights and practitioners who are implementing solutions.

Charitable organisations Tanya and Niall support

Tanya founded the Zoe Sarojini Education Trust supporting access to education for girls in southern Africa, and Niall and Tanya continue to support it as a mainstay of their philanthropy. The one-to-one model and direct impact on individual lives is hugely motivating. Tanya also supports Giving Women, a Geneva‑based association backing grassroots, women‑led projects around the world with “action philanthropy” with time and expertise as well as money.

Alongside supporting Founders Pledge for its mission, Niall also provides support to human rights and and climate action efforts, identifying these as primary levers of peace and equitability in our future world.

About Tanya and Niall

Tanya was born in England and grew up living in India, Israel, France & England. A social anthropologist (Cambridge, PhD from LSE), Tanya is today a relationships practitioner helping people define and live their deepest desires and values. Previously she supported NGOs and social businesses in Europe, Africa and Latin America to define, measure and manage social impact. Tanya’s pivotal experiences have included: 9 months in the early 1990s living with indigenous communities and rubber tappers in the Brazilian Amazon and witnessing the power of collective action supporting their grassroots social movement; losing her then 27 year-old sister to suicide in 2000, an experience that shaped her view of grief and resilience, and later led to the founding an education trust; and more recently, discovering tantric approaches to integrating body intuition.

Irish by birth, Niall had his formative years in South Africa after moving there as a child. A computer scientist, he’s a serial entrepreneur and has founded businesses in southern Africa, western Europe and the US (including The Cloud acquired by BSkyB in 2010 and EVRYTHNG acquired by Digimarc in 2021). He is co-founder of Morphosis, a climate adaptation investment business, a tech venture angel investor and NED/chair, IC chair for European deeptech investment fund Erom, and a Pledge Ventures LP. The democratic transition in South Africa accelerated just as Niall was graduating university in Johannesburg. Being able to participate and contribute to the process in a small way gave Niall a lasting belief in the possibility of individual actions to shape change. Bootstrapping himself as an entrepreneur freshly landed in London in 2001 with no network and very limited resources was hugely challenging, and enormously empowering.