Kim Rueben was a senior advisor to the Land and Fiscal Systems impact area of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and is the first vice president of the National Tax Association—the leading association dedicated to advancing the theory and practice of public finance, including public taxing; spending; and borrowing. She is also a contractor with the Congressional Budget Office and an adjunct fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC).

Rueben is an expert on state and local public finance and the economics of education. Her work examines state and local public finance and focuses on state budget and tax issues, intergovernmental relations, fiscal institutions, and the economics of education. That includes exploring federal and state financing of K–12 and postsecondary education and how decisions affect individuals in different states.

Rueben has worked closely with state officials and served on state tax advisory boards including in California, Colorado, Kansas, New York, and Washington, DC, and has testified before congressional and state legislative committees. She was a consultant for the Washington, DC, Tax Revision Commission in 2023 and served on the commission in 2012. She was a member of the National Academy of Sciences panel that examined the report The Economic and Fiscal Consequences of Immigration and was on the executive board of the American Education Finance Association and the board of the National Tax Association. Rueben also volunteers to do taxes for low-income families through the VITA program and volunteers with City Dogs and City Kitties Rescue, fostering and helping to place rescue dogs.

Before joining the Lincoln Institute, Rueben was the Sol Price Fellow and director of the State and Local Finance Initiative at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. She was also a research fellow at the PPIC. Rueben received a BS in applied math–economics from Brown University, an MS in economics from the London School of Economics, and a PhD in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.