Rangappa was born in Baltimore, Maryland, to parents from Karnataka, India,[5] 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.[6] Her father is an anesthesiologist and worked at a Virginia army base.[6] Her mother is an accountant.[6] As a child she participated in beauty pageants.[6]
Rangappa grew up in Hampton, Virginia,[6] 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.[7][8] Following graduation, she was awarded a Fulbright scholarship, studying constitutional reform in Bogotá, Colombia.[6] She graduated from Yale Law School with a J.D. in 2000 and completed an internship with the US Attorneys office in Baltimore.[6][5] 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.[9] In 2003 she was admitted to the state bars of New York and Connecticut.[10]
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,[9] and became one of the first Indian Americans to hold the position.[11][5]
In 2005, Rangappa left the FBI to get married and have children.[5] She returned to Yale to become an associate dean of its law school.[12] Currently she serves as a director of admissions at Jackson Institute for Global Affairs.[13] She has taught at Yale University,[14]Wesleyan University, and University of New Haven, teaching National Security Law and related courses.[10]
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.[5][23]
