With a baseball glove in hand, ice skates on her feet, and a field hockey stick at the ready, Anno Bent Murphy ’69 started life on the move, encouraged by her father to be active. When she came to Emma Willard School, Anno found a community where she could nurture her love of sports—including horseback riding!—and a place that would instill values for life.

“Emma Willard taught me a great deal—strength of character, confidence in myself, the ability to feel comfortable in unfamiliar surroundings,” Anno shares. These qualities carried her through multiple career transitions, grounded by her unwavering passion for wellness.

After losing her father at a young age, due in part to a lack of healthy living, Anno was determined to keep herself moving. When she shifted her professional focus to embrace fitness, Anno found herself diving deep into aerobic exercise, skiing, golf, and tennis. Becoming a personal trainer, she invested the knowledge she’d gleaned into the lives of others.

All the while, Anno was supporting Emma Willard School—chairing her class’s 25th Reunion,  serving on the Alumnae Association Council, co-chairing the Annual Fund, and sitting on the Board of Trustees. It was during her board tenure that Anno first invested in the school’s wellness initiatives, making a gift to equip the weight and training room in Mott Gymnasium. She later funded music equipment for the aerobics space—an absolute necessity for an invigorating workout!

During the Infinite Horizon campaign, Anno has again shown her commitment to nurturing girls’ minds and bodies through a gift to initiatives underway in the formation of our Center for Resilience and Wellbeing. With a strategic focus on expanding mental health programming, the program will impact all facets of the student experience, informed by research on programs for girls’ wellness, resilience, and more.

“I support wellness initiatives for Emma Willard’s students because, for all the mind work they do—their workload and managing stress—I hope they have the opportunity to sit down and talk when they need to,” Anno says. “I want them to be able to marry fitness with mental health—to understand what happens to a body physiologically and mentally when they exercise. There is a connection.” That increased blood flow from movement improves both mental acuity and mood, keys to students’ sense of wellbeing.
In that intersection of mental and physical health, Anno believes there is a reward that she wants to be a part of sharing: a life of peace and clarity. “Be strong,” she encourages. “This is not a dress rehearsal.”