BIO

For a decade, Brakeyshia has produced engaging research and analyses for today’s budget and tax policy debates. Currently, she is a policy analyst at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), where she researches and writes about tax policies to inform the public and supports advocates and policymakers with analyses to help secure equitable tax policies, sound fiscal practices, and policy solutions that remedy historical injustices.

Being a nimble analyst for the Cross Cutting Research Department for ITEP, means she is tracking trends, following multiple tax topics, and writing about issues on the three levels of government. Lately, a constant theme for her work centers on exploring the intersection between race and taxation. She authored an essay about Moore v. United States, one the most consequential Supreme Court cases about the tax code in decades, and how it could affect the racial wealth gap. She’s also co-written a report about property tax circuit breakers, which are the most effective programs for making property taxes more affordable. She is also co-authoring a book chapter for the Pension Research Council at The University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School on how using tax policy can reduce the racial retirement wealth gap in a book called, “Reducing Retirement Inequality: Building Wealth and Old-Age Resilience” by Oxford University Press set to be released soon.

In 2023, she published an article in the tax policy field’s flagship publication, Tax Notes, about the racial implications of state tax policy debates. During the same year, she wrote an essay for the American Bar Association’s Section of Civil Rights and Social Justice's award-winning quarterly Human Rights Magazine on the inequities facing workers today between taxes on wage income and taxes on wealth in both federal and state tax codes. Throughout her career she has also published articles in The Huffington Post, The Dallas Morning News, The Austin American-Statesman, Bloomberg Tax, and Common Dreams. Her publications have garnered the attention of the public, other researchers, and the media.

Previously, she was a senior associate on the Fiscal Federalism Initiative at Pew researching tax policies and public programs at the intersection of the federal-state fiscal relationship. Her research products included analyses of the connection between the rising cost of the student loan interest deduction and student debt, the geographic distribution of federal tax policies, and the federal share of state revenue, among others. She was selected to serve on Pew’s inaugural Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity (IDE) Council that was comprised of staff and senior leadership and created a set of recommendations for the CEO for organization development and staff hiring.

Prior to Pew, she spent two years in Austin, TX, as a state policy fellow with Every Texan (then-named the Center for Public Policy Priorities), through the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities’ post-graduate research fellowship program. At Every Texan, she conducted data analysis, published reports, blog posts, and op-eds, and presented legislative testimony on Texas’ budget and tax policies to describe how policymaker’s decisions affected low- and moderate-income families, people of color, and millennials. She was also the lead organizer for Texas Forward, a coalition of over seventy organizations that advocated for fair budget and tax policies in Texas.

She earned her bachelor’s degree in political science and history from The University of Texas at Tyler, where she was inducted into Pi Sigma Alpha (National Political Science Honor Society), selected for the Legacy Award and the Dr. Robert and Shirley Jones Leadership Award her senior year, and served as a research assistant for two professors within the College of Arts and Sciences (Department of History and Department of Literature and Languages). She also was 1 of 31 students who completed The University of Texas System’s prestigious Bill Archer Fellowship. As an undergraduate fellow, during the fall semester in 2011, she took classes in Washington, DC and interned at the United States Department of Justice in the Office of Justice Programs.

She has a master’s degree in public policy, with an emphasis in public budgeting and finance, from George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government. While at George Mason, she was one of a few students selected to participate in the Spring 2014 cohort of the President’s Student Leadership Seminar. During her time at GMU, she also interned with the Office of U.S. Trade Representative in the Executive Office of the President of the United States.

She is a proud native of Carrollton, Texas.

*All opinions on this website do not reflect the opinions of my employer and other affiliations.*