He is originally from Australia, and earned a Ph.D. in Food Science at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Everett worked on dairy industry projects at a federal government research center on Australia, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), to help develop a technology to manufacture hard cheese from ultra-filtered milk. He was also employed at a dairy industry-funded company as a science liaison manager to bring together publicly funded researchers with the dairy industry to solve technical and scientific problems.