BUCKHANNON — One of West Virginia Wesleyan College’s most successful Thomas H. Albinson School of Business alumni, John Taylor ’80 will deliver the Founders Day address at West Virginia Wesleyan College on Friday, Oct. 5 at 3 p.m. in Wesley Chapel. The title of his address will be “Back to the Future.”

Taylor is a semi-retired executive who has spent the last 30 years building innovative, disruptive companies.  He has served as a member of the college’s Board of Trustees since 2011. Most recently, Taylor was the COO/CFO for Inspire Inc., where he teamed with the founder to develop a health-based social media company. Now with two million users, and continuing rapid growth, it is the largest platform of its kind in the world.

Taylor also served as CFO of CodeRyte after spending 16 years in telecommunications. CodeRyte was a company leading the development of applying artificial intelligence to medical records. The CodeRyte software made it possible to unlock the valuable clinical knowledge that is buried deep within these records and make it available for research, analysis, and health care delivery.

After achieving a six-fold growth in revenue the company was acquired by 3M Healthcare.Taylor served as President of the Consumer Market Division for Qwest Communications and was responsible for all aspects of the billion dollar business unit. He became part of Qwest when it acquired LCI Telecommunications.

Preceding LCI, he spent 12 years at MCI Telecommunications. During this time at MCI, he had many diverse roles such as Finance, Marketing, Investor Relations, and Customer Service.

Taylor earned a bachelor of science in business administration at Wesleyan.  A four-year member of the football team, he was best known as the blocking fullback for two of the College’s all-time great running backs, Larry Coffey ’81 and Rich Thomaselli ’81.

He currently lives in Derwood, Md. with his wife Nancy Skidmore Taylor, Class of 1979. They have four adult children and three grandchildren.