She obtained her doctorate from the University of Texas at Austin and prior to that worked as a tax manager with PricewaterhouseCoopers in Washington, D.C., and Zurich, Switzerland. Her undergraduate degree is in business and accounting from North Carolina State University and has a Master’s of Accountancy from the Ohio State University. Powers’s research interests include the effect of corporate governance on firms’ tax policy, investors’ use of tax disclosures and tax-related frictions in capital markets.