Asha Rangappa

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 a director of admissions at Jackson Institute for 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]

• Profile at Yale Law School
• Personal website