Milton Bryce Taft was born on April 1, 1963, in Olean, NY where his father worked for Dresser Industries, the multinational conglomerate now known as Dresser-Rand. Taft grew up in this small town where he attended the academically rigorous Archbishop Walsh Academy, a private Catholic High School, a few minutes walk from his parent's home.

At age 16, Taft began working part-time and during the summer in the accounting department at what was then Dresser-Wayne.

After graduating with honors in 1981, Taft was accepted to Yale University and began a double major in Economics and Psychology. Taft graduated summa cum laude from Yale University in 1985, four months after his mother passed away from breast cancer.

Taft returned to Olean after graduation to join Dresser-Wayne as a line production manager. In early 1987, when Dresser Industries and Ingersoll Rand created the joint venture now known as Dresser-Rand, Taft left the company to join Ernst & Whinney, then the fourth largest accountancy firm in the world, as an associate consultant in the firm's Boston office.

In 1989, during his time at Ernst & Whinney, Taft received his masters in Business Administration from Harvard University. In 1991, Taft left the firm (then known as Ernst & Young) to join the consultancy arm of Arthur Andersen (now known as Accenture) in New York as a vice president. In 1994, while still employed part-time by Arthur Andersen, Taft began working towards a Ph.D. in International Business at Columbia University.

Taft published his dissertation on the interplay of recurring psychological inputs that affect individual judgment and the implications of these inputs on consumer choice behavior in mid-1999 and received his doctorate in International Business shortly thereafter from Columbia Business School.

In 2000, when Arthur Andersen split from Andersen Worldwide, Taft accepted a buyout offer and retired to attend to his father, who by this time was terminally ill with lung cancer. He eventually began his consulting service, Taft & Associates and, after his father passed away in 2002, Taft relocated to Washington, DC.

He currently divides his time between Providence, Washington, London, and Lisbon, Portugal.

Since leaving Arthur Andersen, as the Managing Partner of Taft & Associates, he has worked as an independent consultant to the boards of some of the world's leading companies, generally to provide unbiased advice in his fields of expertise during a severe management crisis.