Season 1: Two Years on a Merger. Walked Away at the 11th Hour. Best Decision Ever.

Lara Murphy spent two years on a merger and walked away at the 11th hour. The decision nearly broke her. A year later, it set her free to build something she never expected.
Leadership

Guest

Lara Murphy
CEO of Calgary Wild FC

Date

June 5, 2026

Overview

Tyler Chisholm sits down with Lara Murphy, co-founder of Ryan Murphy Construction and CEO of the Calgary Wild FC, Alberta's first professional women's soccer club. Lara spent two years working toward a merger, then walked away at the 11th hour. She describes it as the worst day of her life and, a year later, the best decision she ever made. In this episode, she talks about what it takes to hand a company you built from scratch to someone else, why being first means writing the playbook as you go, and how 46,000 fans showed up for a league that didn't exist two seasons ago.

The risk of certainty runs through all of it: from walking away from a deal she'd invested years in, to leading a sports franchise in a sport that Canadians are still learning to watch.

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