A photo of a man from the waist up. He is smiling and has his arms crossed against his chest.
Everette Taylor has served as the CEO of Kickstarter since 2022. (Allen Jones, Enterprise Marketing and Communications)

April 2, 2025

Kickstarter CEO Everette Taylor will be VCU’s May commencement speaker

Taylor will speak to the Class of 2025 at the May 10 ceremony at the Greater Richmond Convention Center.

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By Mike Porter

Everette Taylor, the CEO of Kickstarter, will serve as the keynote speaker at Virginia Commonwealth University’s commencement ceremony in May.

Taylor has worked as CEO of Kickstarter, a crowdfunding platform for creative projects, since September 2022. Prior to joining the company, he served as chief marketing officer of Artsy, an online marketplace for buying and selling art. While at Artsy, Taylor was named one of the world’s most innovative CMOs by Business Insider and one of the world’s most influential CMOs by Forbes.

Previous positions included working in marketing leadership positions for Skurt, an on-demand rental car company; Qualaroo, a B2B software company; and Sticker Mule, an e-commerce company. Taylor started his first company, EZ Events, at the age of 19, and it was successfully acquired in 2011. He then established ET Enterprises, a portfolio of companies including PopSocial, MilliSense, ArtX and GrowthHackers, in 2013 and served as PopSocial’s CEO.

VCU’s universitywide commencement will be held at 10 a.m. on Saturday, May 10, at the Greater Richmond Convention Center, 403 N. Third St. The event will be livestreamed at www.vcu.edu.

For more information, including department ceremonies and an RSVP link for new graduates, visit commencement.vcu.edu.