PAMELA SCHEIN MURPHY,  Founder and Consummate Selector

Pamela Schein Murphy sees the world through the eyes of a native New Yorker — she was born and raised in Manhattan. Her ability to combine sensibility with vision adds an insightful element to Benchmarc Restaurants, where she heads up the Marketing and Branding division for the group. It’s also what planted the seed for The Select 7.

Before entering the restaurant world, Murphy was drawn to the excitement and fast pace of the media world. She pursued literature, psychology and women’s studies at the University of Rhode Island and later earned her Master’s Degree in Magazine Journalism from New York University. Working her way through the ranks of print media, Murphy worked at some of the publishing world’s biggest women’s magazines, such as Fitness, Mirabella, Elle and Glamour. Using knowledge acquired from years spent climbing the masthead, Murphy developed her first independent venture, a national lifestyle magazine called Madison, in 1994. Targeted towards an audience with an appreciation of the arts, culture, photography and architecture, the magazine dipped into book reviews, travel, food, fashion, commerce and entertainment.

It was while at Madison that she first met her future husband when he came in to talk about writing a food column. The pair married in 2002 and together they capitalized on their love of food and opened Landmarc [Tribeca] in 2004, bringing modern bistro fare to a neighborhood that they truly believed in. Leaving the culinary elements in the hands of her husband, Murphy contributed business savvy and media skills to the successful concept. 

Her business smarts were essential as the Murphys expanded their restaurant group, opening Ditch Plains (2006), Landmarc at the Time Warner Center (2007), Benchmarc Events by Marc Murphy, Kingside at the Viceroy New York Hotel (2014) and Grey Salt in Tampa, Florida (2015).

A  longtime film buff, Murphy created Wild Ocean Films, a company dedicated to producing independent films, with award-winning filmmaker Edward Burns. Their first picture, Purple Violets, starring Selma Blair, Debra Messing and Patrick Wilson, was released in 2008. They also developed Emily Giffin's best-selling novels, Something Borrowed and Something Blue for the screen with Hillary Swank's production company, 2s Films and Alcon Entertainment. 

Murphy also ran The R.E.S.T. Initiative, a non-profit organization that worked to alleviate the fear, anxiety and stress of chemotherapy treatment by bringing massage therapies directly into chemotherapy treatment rooms. The R.E.S.T. Initiative emerged from her own experience with chemotherapy treatment for breast cancer in 2006. After going through a process largely defined by endless hours of waiting, apprehension and discomfort, she decided that it would be possible to counterbalance some of the anxieties of the treatment process itself while simultaneously providing health benefits. After successfully completing her own course of chemo, Murphy decided that the way to give back would be to provide other cancer patients with a respite from treatment — in the midst of what feels like a series of never-ending delays, needles, machines and compounded by the fear of the medicine itself, there can be comfort. Today the program is currently running at the NYU Clinical Cancer Center as part of their own alternative medicine practice. 

Today, alongside her “day job” as head of Marketing and Branding for her restaurant group, Murphy is the principle of The Select 7, a curated website she imagined from years of travel, research, recommendations and list-keeping. Distilling all of her knowledge she came up with The Select 7 and hopes that it will become a hub for friends to share their own years of research, learn about new experiences and opportunities and really, just some cool shit.

Murphy lives in New York City with her husband Marc and their two children, Campbell and Callen.