Ryan Taylor Looks Back

Ryan Taylor ’94 with his wife Elizabeth and son Wesley

Alumnus Ryan Taylor ’94 looks back and tells why he annually provides need-based scholarship support of a Kinkaid student.

1. What do you value most about your experience as a Kinkaid student?

At the top of a long list was simply being enmeshed in the positive environment. The administrators, teachers, and students are there to perform, to excel. I started at Kinkaid in high school after many years at schools at which it felt like everyone was there to punch a timecard and go home.

2. Why have you chosen to support student scholarships?

I couldn't have attended Kinkaid without the support I received and know how that changed me. And because I started relatively late, I understand the alternatives. If my support leads to one incremental student in the high school and we renew it every four years, that will mean something like 15 students who get to experience what I did.

3. How did you choose the field you are working in?

About four years ago I was thinking about quitting a comfortable position to pursue the much riskier endeavor of starting an investment firm, and I was waffling. At that time a very insightful person who knows me well gave me a book, The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film, a series of interviews of Murch by Michael Ondaatje. Early in their discussions, Ondaatje asks Murch the same question you've asked me. Murch said that when he was around ten years old, he enjoyed recording sounds and then cutting and splicing audiotapes to change the sounds and, to his ear, improve them. He loved doing this and did it whenever he could. So he chose a career that enabled him to get paid pursuing his childhood hobby.

He tells Ondaatje that he thinks a key to happiness is to find an occupation that allows you to do something you loved doing around that age, when you are old enough to know what you like but not old enough to worry about what kind of label is attached to the activity or whether you could get paid well for doing it. If you find that, you will likely be tapping into some fundamental aspect of yourself. This concept gave me the jolt I needed. My tape splicing equivalent at that age was reading and solving puzzles, which is essentially what I get paid to do now as an investor.

4. Tell us about your family and what it means to you that your sister has a child at Kinkaid?

One of my few decisions that ranks above attending Kinkaid was choosing to marry the person who gave me the book I referenced earlier. Elizabeth and I have a son named Wesley and live in Manhattan. My younger sister Erin lives in Houston and has a stepson who just started sixth grade at Kinkaid. Apparently, he was somewhat reluctant to leave his friends at his prior school but now loves it. Smart boy.