Vanessa Williamson is a senior fellow in Governance Studies at The Brookings Institution and a senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. Her research focuses on the intersection of taxation and democracy in America, exploring its historical and contemporary impacts.

She is the author of "Read My Lips: Why Americans Are Proud to Pay Taxes" and co-author, with Harvard professor Theda Skocpol, of "The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism.