Asha Rangappa | |
|---|---|
| Born | Renuka Asha Rangappa November 15, 1974 |
| Education | Princeton University (BA) Yale University (JD) |
| Children | 2 |
Renuka Asha Rangappa (born November 15, 1974) [1] is an American lawyer, former FBI agent, Assistant Dean of Admissions and Senior Lecturer at Yale University's Jackson School of Global Affairs, and a commentator on MSNBC and CNN. She was previously an associate dean at Yale Law School. [2] Rangappa is also a member of the board of editors of Just Security . [3]
Rangappa was born in Baltimore, Maryland, to parents from Karnataka, India, [4] who immigrated to the US in 1970. She told Elle that her parents "came under a provision where the government was specially looking for doctors," under the 1965 Hart-Celler Act. [5] Her father is an anesthesiologist and worked at a Virginia army base. [5] Her mother is an accountant. [5] As a child she participated in beauty pageants. [5]
Rangappa grew up in Hampton, Virginia, [5] and graduated from Kecoughtan High School. She graduated cum laude with an A.B. from the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs in 1996 after completing a 136-page long senior thesis, titled "The Rule of Law: Reconciling, Judicial Institution Building and U.S. Counternarcotics Policy in Colombia", under the supervision of John Dilulio. [6] [7] Following graduation, she was awarded a Fulbright scholarship, studying constitutional reform in Bogotá, Colombia. [5] She graduated from Yale Law School with a J.D. in 2000 and completed an internship with the US Attorneys office in Baltimore. [5] [4] and took a clerkship serving the Honorable Juan R. Torruella on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in San Juan, Puerto Rico. [8] In 2003, she was admitted to the state bars of New York and Connecticut. [9]
In 2001, Rangappa began her FBI training in Quantico, Virginia. After graduation from Quantico Academy, she moved to New York City where she took a job as an FBI special agent, specializing in counterintelligence investigations, [8] and became one of the first Indian Americans to hold the position. [10] [4]
In 2005, Rangappa left the FBI to get married and have children. [4] She returned to Yale to become an associate dean of its law school. [11] Currently she serves as Assistant Dean of Admissions and Senior Lecturer at Yale's Jackson School of Global Affairs. [12] She has taught at Yale University, [13] Wesleyan University, and University of New Haven, teaching National Security Law and related courses. [9]
She has published op-eds in HuffPost, [14] The Washington Post , [15] The New York Times , Time , [16] The Atlantic , [9] and The Wall Street Journal. [17] She has appeared on MSNBC, BBC, NPR, [18] and other networks as a commentator. She serves as a legal and national security analyst for CNN. [19] [20]
Rangappa is a member of the board of directors for the South Asian Bar Association of Connecticut, [21] the Connecticut Society of Former FBI Agents, [21] and the Connecticut Women's Hall of Fame.
Rangappa was previously married to a fellow FBI agent, Andrew Dodd, in 2005; they later divorced in 2011. She lives in Hamden, Connecticut, with her son and daughter. [4] [22]