Make plans to attend the 2025 Excalibur Awards, recognizing the best work in communications from Western New York’s top professionals and companies. We are thrilled to host this year's event on Thursday, September 25 at New York Beer Project. Join us for cocktails, hors d'oeuvres, buffet dinner and of course, the opportunity to celebrate and network with top professionals in the region. 

If you have any dietary restrictions, please email Kate Backlas at [email protected] 

Tickets are $85 per person; tables of Six available for $500. To reserve a table, please select the Table of Six option when registering and include the names of your attendees. 

Meet the winners of our 2025 Special Honors 

Meet our emcee

We are honored to welcome Taylor Epps, senior reporter at 7 News in Buffalo, as the 2025 Excalibur Award Emcee. Taylor joined WKBW in June 2019 after graduating from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University

In her six years in WNY, Epps has covered a wide range of community-based stories from following veterans to D.C. with Honor Flight Buffalo Niagara twice, to traveling across the pond to cover Bills Mafia in London.

Here at home, she's raised the voices of neighbors through the more difficult times, from the COVID-19 pandemic to the mass shooting at Tops. She has followed the rise in car thefts in Buffalo, efforts to bring safety to a dangerous stretch of road in Hamburg and pressed for answers until healthcare workers in Buffalo got the money they were promised. But she takes pleasure in showing off the positive stories that rise out of those hard times, from a woman's journey through cancer getting the attention of her favorite rapper Drake, to highlighting some of the gems of Jefferson Avenue.

Epps won a New York Emmy Award for her work in the days following the May 14th shooting. She was recognized as one of the 30 under 30 Changemakers of 2020. She was honored by Buffalo Black Achievers in 2022.

She is a board member of the Buffalo Association of Black Journalists and the Buffalo Broadcasters Association.

She is a dog mom to a dachshund mix named Reese and gets home to see her mom, dad and sister in South Jersey by the beach whenever she can. She's a big sports fan, especially the WNBA. She loves to bake in her free time. Follow her on Instagram @taylor.epps.