Kurt Taylor Gaubatz grew up in the Silicon Valley in California while it was transitioning from orchards to high-tech factories. His father and mother were both engineers. His uncles were engineers. The other people living on his street were engineers. He thought about being a musician, but discovered that that was a field that was more suited to people with innate talent. He began to pursue economics and then international relations on discovering that they were well suited for people who came from the engineering tribe.

Professor Gaubatz is married to Kathlyn Taylor Gaubatz, who earned her Ph.D. in Politics at Princeton. She is currently a Non-Profit Management Consultant. She has previously served as executive director of Virginia Social Ventures, the Foodbank of South-Eastern Virginia, and Compass Community Services. She is the author of Crime in the Public Mind (Univ of Michigan Press, 1995), and several articles on family homelessness in the United States and the U.K.

Two children, Jayne and Andrew, complete the Gaubatz family. Jayne is currently a Peace Corps volunteer in Madagascar. Her Madagascar blog gets updated whenever she wanders closer to civilization. Andrew is a computer science major and Rodman Scholar at the University of Virginia.

If he had more spare time, Professor Gaubatz would spend it playing the drums, the marimba and other various percussion instruments, fencing(epee), running, cycling, rollerblading, building furniture, backpacking, climbing mountains, and playing at the beach.