Established 2026 by Stephen Taylor in honor & memory of his wife, Kimberley Anne Taylor.
If you have just finished reading The Circuitous Path: Through Entrepreneurship, you know Kimberley. You know how she walked into a Saturday morning class called How to Flirt, wearing a blue and white sundress, with eyes that were alive with energy. You know how she held her coffee cup with both hands, as if it were something precious. You know how she listened — not tilting her head or nodding along, but looking straight at you with a quiet intensity that told you she was fully present, fully with you.
You know that she and I built Firefly Magic Firefly Lights from our home, with no investors, no outside capital, and no safety net — only faith in an idea and the freedom to pursue it on our own terms. You know that she passed away on May 26, 2025 — my birthday — after almost 36 years of marriage.
What you may not know is what I decided to do in the months that followed.
The Kimberley Taylor Music-Entrepreneur Fellowship at Hillsdale College was established with an endowment gift — an endowment that will fund student fellowships in perpetuity, long after both Kimberley and I are gone. It was not a difficult decision. Kimberley believed deeply in young people and in their potential. She invested in everyone she met — with her attention, her memory for detail, her encouragement, and her belief. This fellowship is simply a continuation of what she already did, extended now to students she will never meet.
I chose Hillsdale College because its values mirror who Kimberley was and what we believed together. A college that refuses every penny of government funding because it values its independence. A college that teaches commerce not as job training but as part of a free society. A college whose mission — to provide sound learning in pursuit of truth and in defense of liberty — would have resonated with a woman who grew up in a military family understanding that freedom is not given. It is earned, defended, and sustained through character.
Many people encounter the word fellowship in a religious context — a gathering of people united by shared faith. In the academic world, the word has a related but distinct meaning, and it is worth explaining clearly.
An academic fellowship is a financial award given to a student who has been selected based on specific criteria. Unlike a standard scholarship that may simply reward academic grades, a fellowship recognizes something more — a combination of achievement, character, purpose, and potential. It says: we have chosen you not just because of your grades, but because of who you are and what you are building.
A fellowship is also typically renewable. It is not a one-time gift but an ongoing relationship between the institution and the student. At Hillsdale, Kimberley Taylor Music-Entrepreneur Fellows receive their award each semester, provided they remain in good academic standing. They are also expected to correspond annually with me about their progress and activities — and to meet with me if I wish. That connection matters. Kimberley would have wanted to know these students. Through the fellowship, I do.
The source of the fellowship is an endowment — a permanently invested fund held by Hillsdale College. Each year, a portion of the investment earnings from that endowment is paid out as fellowship awards. The principal — the original gift — remains invested and is never spent. This means the fellowship will continue awarding students for decades, long beyond my lifetime.
It is oriented toward a specific kind of person — one Kimberley would have recognized immediately.
In that spirit, it reflects qualities she valued deeply: curiosity as action — not merely interest, but the willingness to test, build, learn, and try again. Integrity under pressure — the kind of character that reveals itself when no one is watching and when the easier path would be to quit or compromise. And a willingness to build without a roadmap — to begin before all the answers are known, using resourcefulness, discipline, and courage to turn an idea into something real.
Specifically, a bootstrapping spirit — the willingness to build something from nothing, to begin before conditions are perfect, and to move forward without waiting for permission, certainty, or outside funding.
As a player, a singer, a member of a musical group, or someone who has built or considered building a business connected to the music world.
This reflects Kimberley’s belief, which I shared, that creativity and commerce are not opposites. They belong together. It is possible to build something meaningful and beautiful at the same time.
Hillsdale College was founded in 1844 in Hillsdale, Michigan. Its founding mission was to provide sound learning in a way that perpetuates the blessings of civil and religious liberty and intelligent piety. That mission has not changed in nearly two hundred years.
What makes Hillsdale genuinely unusual among American colleges and universities is its absolute refusal of government funding — including federal student aid. Not one penny of taxpayer money enters the college's budget. This is not a political statement. It is a principled commitment to independence. Hillsdale believes that to accept government money is to accept government influence, and that no institution can teach the principles of a free society while compromising its own freedom.
The college is led by President Larry P. Arnn, a scholar of Winston Churchill and the American founding, who has guided Hillsdale for more than two decades. It was President Arnn who signed the endowment agreement establishing Kimberley's fellowship in April 2026.
Hillsdale's academic reputation is strong and growing. Its core curriculum requires every student — regardless of major — to study the great books of Western civilization, the history and philosophy of the American founding, and the principles of a free and commercial society. This is not background education. It is the center of what Hillsdale does.
Within Hillsdale College, the Kimberley Taylor Music-Entrepreneur Fellowship is housed in the Hutchison Center for Commerce and Freedom — the college's dedicated center for the study of business, economics, and entrepreneurship within the context of a free society.
The Hutchison Center operates on a principle that is simple but increasingly rare in American higher education: that commerce and freedom are inseparable. A society that restricts commerce restricts freedom. A society that protects the right to build, trade, and create is a society that protects human dignity and human potential.
At the Hutchison Center, students do not simply learn business skills. They study the history of commerce, the philosophy of free markets, the economic thinking of figures like F.A. Hayek and Ludwig von Mises, and the relationship between entrepreneurship and the institutions of a free government. They learn, in other words, not just how to build a business but why building a business matters and how it can contribute to America.
The Center is led by its Academic Director, Dr. Charles Steele, and its Executive Director, David Danford — a United States Military Academy graduate who served over fifteen years in the armed forces before joining Hillsdale's mission. It was David Danford who worked with me to structure the fellowship and bring it to life.
Kimberley grew up as the eldest of four children in a military family. Her father, Lieutenant Colonel Jack Roberts, served in the United States Air Force from World War II through 1969 — nearly three decades of service to his country. She grew up understanding, not as an abstraction but as a lived daily reality, that freedom is not given. It is defended, sustained, and earned through character.
That upbringing shaped everything about her. The self-reliance. The adaptability. The willingness to take an idea seriously and pursue it without waiting for someone else to validate it. The bootstrapped company built from home. The belief that you could create something beautiful and meaningful on your own terms.
Those are Hillsdale values. Those are Hutchison Center values. That is why this college and this center are the right home for this fellowship in her name.
My Mayflower grandfather, Henry Samson, at just sixteen years old, arrived in America in 1620 carrying an independent spirit that this country was built upon. Kimberley carried that same spirit through her life. The fellowship that bears her name is an investment in students who carry it forward — in the next generation of people who will build, create, and defend the kind of free society that makes all of it possible.
If Kimberley's story has moved you — if you have seen in her something that has stirred those feelings in you — there is a way to participate in her legacy.
Gifts to the Kimberley and Stephen Taylor Entrepreneurial Endowment at Hillsdale College are tax-deductible charitable contributions. Every gift, of any size, is added to the endowment principal and invested permanently. The earnings from those investments fund this fellowship award for Hillsdale students now and for generations to come.
Hillsdale College does not accept government money. It operates entirely on the generosity of people who believe in its mission. A gift to Kimberley's fellowship is supported by a woman they never knew — in exactly the generous, believing way she approached everyone fortunate enough to cross her path.
Kimberley loved Hillsdale and everything it represents. Through the fellowship that bears her name, she has found another way to show her love by helping others.