2026 NTA Equity & Inclusion Travel Fellowship Recipients

The Equity & Inclusion Travel Fellowship provides conference travel funding with the goal of increasing participation in and creating long-lasting relationships with the National Tax Association and its activities among underrepresented minority (URM) graduate students and early career PhDs/J.D.s engaged in the theory and practice of public finance, including public taxation, spending, and borrowing. The Fellowships will cover hotel, conference registration, and a travel cost offset.

Underrepresented minority scholars face a variety of systemic barriers and may lack peers, role models, or mentors in their own departments and networks. Professional conferences, like the NTA, are a helpful place to build relationships outside of one’s own academic and professional settings. The aim of this fellowship is to provide an opportunity for junior scholars to participate in and network with the NTA community.

All PhD or J.D. advanced graduate students (4th year or later for PhD candidates, 2nd or 3rd year for law students) or early career graduates (fewer than 6 years since graduate degree) with interests in the theory and practice of public finance, who are members of an underrepresented minority group. Underrepresented minorities include persons who identify as American Indian, Alaskan Native, Black (not of Hispanic origin), Hispanic (including persons of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, and Central or South American origin) or, Pacific Islander. Eligible fellowship recipients will also be a U.S. Citizen, Permanent Legal Resident, DACA or Eligible Non-Citizen (as defined by FAFSA). 

The travel fellowship is inspired by the successful American Economic Association URM Travel Grants and the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management Equity and Inclusion Fellowships.

2026 Recipients

Pablo M. Guzmán Lizardo is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Poverty, Violence, and Governance Lab at Stanford University, where he completed his PhD in Political Economics. His research lies at the intersection of public finance and development economics, combining experimental, econometric, and survey methods to evaluate how governments in low- and middle-income countries build fiscal capacity through taxation.

Paola Gabriela Villa Paro is a PhD student in Economics at the University of Michigan, specializing in public finance, labor, and industrial organization. Her research examines electricity markets, renewable procurement, mandated benefits, labor market power, and redistribution in Peru and Latin America. She previously worked at Princeton, Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA), and Research Center of Universidad del Pacífico.

Roxana Gonzalez-Cortes is an Economics PhD Candidate at the University of South Carolina specializing in public finance and urban economics. Her research explores topics like the distributional effects of tax policy in housing markets and how artificial intelligence can be used to study central parameters in public finance. Prior to starting her PhD, she received her bachelor’s from the University of Tennessee. She is an alumna of the American Economics Association Summer Program and a proud daughter of Mexican immigrants.

Sumit Ramdas Ilamkar is a PhD candidate in Economics at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, working in public finance. His dissertation uses Hawaiʻi administrative tax records to study taxpayers who bunch at the same income threshold year after year, and asks whether their spending reveals income they do not report. In related work, he uses campaign-finance data to study how tax changes and contribution limits shape political giving by high-income households. He holds an MS in Economics from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from R.T.M. Nagpur University in India.

Previous Fellows
2025 NTA Equity & Inclusion Travel Fellowship
2024 NTA Equity & Inclusion Travel Fellowship
2023 NTA Equity & Inclusion Travel Fellowship
2022 NTA Equity & Inclusion Travel Fellowship
2021 NTA Equity & Inclusion Travel Fellowship