Liz Murray, whose inspirational story was made into the Lifetime Television’s Emmy-nominated original film Homeless to Harvard, will deliver the keynote address at Her Story 2006, the Junior League of Honolulu Fifth Annual Women’s Conference.

The event takes place March 30 at the Hilton Hawaiian Village and features Murray, along with various speakers in the health, career, and home and office professions.

“For a group like the Junior League, I would really want people to know, especially the adults, that they’re an integral part of helping people who want to change their lives,” says Murray, who credits her former high school teacher Perry Weiner for the motivation to not give up. “They’re an integral part of helping to make that a reality, by being on the other end of that person’s decision.

“And then any youth I speak to, I just want them to know that they need to come through and have determination. People are always saying, ‘well, is it that you were helped out or that you helped yourself?’ and I come from the belief that you help yourself out and then there will be help there for you.”

After Harvard, in about 1 1/2 years, Murray plans to attend graduate school and obtain her Ph.D. in clinical psychology. She also hopes to continue her public speaking gigs and is developing a traveling seminar.

“Through the speaking I’ve been doing over the last seven years, I’ve become really passionate about helping people find solutions in their life,” says Murray, 25. “So, I’ve been developing a seminar that I can take around the country. I enjoy telling my story, but I look forward to being able to make a deeper impact on people by giving them strategies to help themselves.”

Murray, a child of drug-addicted parents, was living on the streets of New York City from age 15 to 18, eating from dumpsters and sleeping in trains and hallways.

When she was 16, her mother passed away from AIDS, and it was through that experience that she decided to live each day with a purpose.

“When my mother passed away, I felt the sense of not only mortality but that, yes, people do go their whole life not fulfilling anything that was important to them,” says Murray. “When you’re a kid, you think I have all the time in the world, and when you see somebody you love very much pass away, you start thinking, wait a minute, this woman wanted to do so many things. My mother, she cared so much to do other things. So I didn’t want to be somebody who went quietly and let go of the things that were important.”

In just two years, Murray finished high school and was subsequently awarded a full scholarship to Harvard. She was also invited to the Oprah Winfrey Show as one of the first recipients of Oprah’s Chutzpah Award.

“That was so much fun because I’ve looked up to Oprah for so many years,” recalls Murray. “She’s so compassionate and driven at the same time. Usually you see people leave behind their mission. They don’t always stay true to reaching out and helping people, and yet she somehow struck this balance of becoming a self-made person, in a sense, but also making sure that she makes her life about helping other people.

“I’ve just looked up to her for so long, and when I got to meet her it was really overwhelming. You get to stand in the presence of somebody whom you admire so much, and it makes you see all the much more how possible things are.”

Today, despite the situation she was put in as a child, Murray continues to take care of her father in New York on the weekends.

“My dad is doing very well,” she says. “He’s been clean and off of drugs for about six years now. He’s doing phenomenal, of course, he’s challenged with his health - he’s HIV positive. But the medicines they have out now are really great and his health has stabilized.

“I just don’t understand how people can get mad at somebody for something that is not really in their control. And for my parents, I saw that their drug use wasn’t really in their control. It’s something that consumed them. I feel like if they could’ve done better they would’ve done better. They weren’t malicious people. They were mentally ill people.

“In my point of view, they didn’t know how to be different and they didn’t have more to give me. How can you get mad at somebody for not giving you something that they don’t have?”

According to Murray, the film Homeless to Harvard is “very much accurate” to her real story. But there is more to her story than that.

“Everyone’s always, like, you were eating out of the dumpsters, and they make it so dramatic and, yes, all that is true. But I also tell people just as I told them in the 20/20 interview, that I had so many friends, and I stayed at their houses and they were really good to me,” explains Murray. “I had my friends’mothers give me clothing and things. I was that couch-hopping teen who was at everybody’s house. But there were a lot of nights that I couldn’t go to anyone’s house. I was on a train. I was in a hallway. But people think I was in a box on a corner for three years.”

Murray says one of the biggest lessons she learned from being homeless was seeing how fast life changes.

“One minute you can have a bed and then not have a bed and be outside,” she explains. “But if life changes that quickly for the bad, why can’t it change that quickly for the good?

“I just hope that anyone who hears me speak, and if they’re unsatisfied with the way their life is, that they realize it doesn’t have to be that way. It’s not easy, but there is a way to change. It’s a process.

“This isn’t about Harvard. This is not about a movie. This is not about Oprah. This is just about finding out what’s most important to you, whatever that is, and then making your life about pursuing that in an honest and aggressive way. Really working to put your best foot forward whatever it is, and anybody can do that.”

The annual HerStory conference is a daylong event designed for women, and it’s expected to draw an attendance of about 500.

“Our goal is to offer a multi-generational experience that blends the myriad areas of a women’s life - career, family, personal wellness - where they can recharge, reconnect and get inspired,” says Avis Takamatsu, Junior League of Honolulu president.

Other featured speakers include state Department of Health and Human Services director Lillian Koller, TryFitness Hawaii owner KC Carlberg, Dr. Laurie Steelsmith, Dr. Laura Weldon Hoque, life coach Melissa Steadman, image consultant Gillian Armour, Junior League of Honolulu sustainer Nancy Pace, feng shui consultant Alan Lum, professional organizer Mea Neal, and nutritionist August Espinal.