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, entitled "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 served as a legal and national security analyst for CNN.^[19][20][21]

Rangappa is a member of the board of directors for the South Asian Bar Association of Connecticut,^[22] the Connecticut Society of Former FBI Agents,^[22] 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][23]