Colleen Murphy

Homelessness Solutions Team

Colleen Murphy is a Principal with LeSar Development Consultants’ Homelessness Solutions Team. Here she designs and implements homelessness-related programs with an emphasis on unsheltered/encampment strategies and the intersection of homelessness and healthcare. Previously she was the Associate Director of Unsheltered Strategies at the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA), where she created and fostered a more robust and coordinated homelessness system to better serve its unsheltered neighbors across one of the largest Continuums of Care in the United States. She also served as a Director of Outreach and Community Engagement at both PATH (People Assisting the Homeless) in Southeast LA and St. Joseph Center in Venice where she led in the development and implementation of one of the first and largest coordinated outreach systems and Coordinated Entry Systems (CES) in the nation.

Colleen is a recognized leader in unsheltered/encampment/street outreach best practices with over a decade of experience bringing thousands of people experiencing homelessness indoors throughout Los Angeles County’s 88 cities. She’s also a trained public health professional and researcher with more than 20 years’ experience fostering community engagement, partnerships, and outreach in underserved communities both here in L.A. and in sub-Saharan Africa. She received her bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from James Madison University and her postgraduate diploma in Epidemiology from the University of London, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.