NYU Wagner

A rising scholar in the field of taxation and social welfare, Lily Batchelder joined the faculty from Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, where she focused on tax aspects of transactional matters and tax policy issues arising before the Treasury Department, IRS and Congress. Her research centers on intersections between taxation and social policy. She explored this relationship in "Taxing the Poor: Income Averaging Reconsidered," (Harvard Journal on Legislation, 2003), in which she argued that the current income tax system places undue burdens on those with volatile incomes, and makes the seldom-acknowledged point that income volatility is both more pronounced, and more onerous from a tax standpoint, for low-income families. As a solution, Batchelder proposed a progressive tax policy that, in certain instances, would average incomes over a two-year period.

After graduating from Stanford University (A.B., 1994) with honors and distinction, Batchelder worked as a client advocate at a small social services organization, Neighbors Together, in Brooklyn, New York. She then joined the board of directors, and continues to serve as a member. Batchelder was the director of community affairs for a New York state senator and managed his re-election campaign. She has served as a research associate with the New America Foundation and as a Wiener Fellow at the Wiener Center on Social Policy at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. She has also held summer positions at the Boston Consulting Group; the Harvard Center for International Development in Nairobi, Kenya, and Cambridge, Massachusetts; the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Deputy Attorney General; Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton; and the Tax Section of the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance. Most recently, she served as a panel member for the National Academy of Social Insurance study "Uncharted Waters: Paying Benefits from Individual Accounts in Federal Retirement Policy."

Batchelder received an M.P.P. with a concentration in applied microeconomics and human services in 1999 from Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, where she was a Kennedy Fellow and President of the Kennedy School Student Government. After Harvard, she went on to get her J.D. in 2002 from Yale Law School, where she received the Clifford L. Porter Prize for Best Paper on Taxation in 2001 and 2002. Additionally, she served as founder and director of the Pro Bono Network, executive editor of the Yale Human Rights & Development Law Journal, director of the Lowenstein International Human Rights Project, and book reviews editor of the Yale Law Journal.