Ruchi Desai

Ruchi Desai is a strategic business leader, legal professional and educator. She has over 10 years of professional experience in finance, law, strategy, and operations. She has held leadership positions at dynamic start-ups, philanthropic organizations, and mature companies. Desai is uniquely skilled at growing talented teams, creating cross-functional synergies, building companies with efficient infrastructure and fostering collaborative, high-achieving cultures. 

Desai is the vice president of strategy and general counsel at interface rehab, inc., one of the largest rehab services providers in California. In her current role she leads strategic initiatives, including new business development and M&A, compliance and litigation. In Q4 2018, interface doubled the facilities it served and headcount. Desai also serves as an independent consultant helping companies scale quickly and enter new markets. At Ruggable, she oversaw the company’s growth from 130 to 500 employees and build of a new manufacturing plant in Chicago. She currently provides legal counsel and review of SAAS and vendor agreements at Business Insider and teaches courses on business and contract drafting at the University of Southern California’s Gould School of Law.

Previously, Desai co-founded an IoT start-up building a smart jewelry product grounded in the enduring connections between people, their own selves and the world around them. She has practiced as an intellectual property attorney for two years and is barred in both New York and California. Prior to her legal career, Desai spent two years trading credit default swaps at a market-neutral fund based out of New York.

Desai holds an LLM, specializing in intellectual property, from the London School of Economics and Political Science, a JD from Harvard Law School and bachelor’s degrees in finance and international studies from, respectively, the Wharton School and the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania.

FACULTY IN THE NEWS

San Francisco Chronicle
April 14, 2021
Re: Jean Lantz Reisz

Jean Reisz was interviewed about the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco's rejection of an earlier U.S. Board of Immigration Appeals decision that denied asylum to Salvadoran sisters who were harassed by a gang. “Their journey to asylum has been difficult and longer than it should have been,” she said. The judge and the board “ignored the evidence and denied lifesaving relief to the twins based on unlawful conclusions” that the court has now overturned. The article also appeared in Microsoft News.

RECENT SCHOLARSHIP

Michael Simkovic
February, 2021

"Income Taxes and Work Hours," University of Virginia Law and Economics Workshop, University of Virginia Law School, Charlottesville, VA.

Dorothy S. Lund
February, 2021

“The Corporate Governance Machine” (with Elizabeth Pollman), 122 Columbia Law Review (forthcoming 2022)

Michael Simkovic
February, 2021

“Income Taxes & Work Hours,” Florida Tax Review.