Erica Williams joined DCFPI in April 2021 as Executive Director. In this role, she leads the team in achieving its mission to shape racially-just tax, budget, and policy decisions for an antiracist, equitable future. 

Erica is a dynamic leader who excels at building relationships, consensus, and collective vision across a range of stakeholders. She brings two decades of experience in pursuing racial, gender, and economic justice through public policy and is grounded in how fiscal and economic policies can advance or impede justice. Driven by her own lived experience, Erica holds a deep commitment to antiracism, equity, and inclusion and is committed to centering Black and brown lived experiences in DCFPI’s pursuit of equity and justice for communities sidelined by racism and economic inequality.

Prior to joining DCFPI, Erica was Vice President for State Fiscal Policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. In this role, she helped lead the organization and its 40-person State Fiscal Policy division, and supported and shaped the efforts of the State Priorities Partnership—a network of over forty state-level fiscal and economic policy shops (including DCFPI) working to reduce poverty and inequality and advance equity and opportunity. In addition to deep state tax and budget analyses, Erica oversaw and grew equity-focused policy initiatives on state Earned Income Tax Credits (EITCs), poverty reduction, and immigration, and spearheaded a major effort to deepen the equity and inclusion focus of the state team and the Partnership as a whole.
Before joining CBPP, Erica worked as a Study Director at the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, where she researched a variety of issues of concern to women, and especially women of color, including equal pay, job training and education, early care and education, Social Security, and civic engagement.

Erica holds a B.A. in Sociology and Spanish studies from Santa Clara University and an M.A. in international policy from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies.