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

Daily Herald
November 20, 2020
Re: Susan Estrich

Susan Estrich wrote an op-ed criticizing Rudy Guiliani's handling of President Trump's post-election legal efforts. "Rudy was always an attention hog, taking credit for things he had nothing to do with," she wrote. "This time, as he himself has made clear, he has a great deal to do with everything that is slowing down the orderly transition of power, which is the hallmark of a democracy." The op-ed also appeared in The Joplin Globe.

RECENT SCHOLARSHIP

Jonathan Barnett
September, 2020

Jonathan Barnett participated on a panel discussion on “How to Improve Data Methodology and Communication Around Patent Licensing,” Innovation Alliance Webinar.

Dorothy S. Lund
September, 2020

"Corporate Finance for Social Good," Columbia Law Review (forthcoming 2021). 

Thomas D. Lyon
September, 2020

"Adults' difficulties in identifying concealment among children interviewed with the putative confession instruction,” (with Jennifer Gongola, Jodi A. Quas, and Steven E. Clark) Applied Cognitive Psychology.