Danya Rangachar

Danya Rangachar is the Chief of Staff at Sanford Heisler Sharp McKnight, a national law firm with offices in the District of Columbia, New York, California, Tennessee, and Maryland. She received her B.A. magna cum laude from Davidson College, where she double majored in Political Science and Sociology.

Danya was named the firm’s first Chief of Staff in 2024. Danya joined the firm’s Nashville office as a Legal Intake and Operations Specialist in 2021, where she primarily conducted intakes related to fraud and employment discrimination, and then worked closely with the firm’s Whistleblower and Qui Tam Practice Group as a Legal Assistant in the firm’s Washington, DC office from 2022 to 2024.

As a Legal Assistant, Danya oversaw over 70 cases (including litigation matters) and supported a number of attorneys in the Whistleblower and Qui Tam Practice Group by taking the lead in drafting, proofing, and researching for legal submissions to various government agencies. She also developed training materials for incoming Legal Assistants part of the practice group and for Legal Intake and Operations Specialists interested in working on whistleblower intakes. Danya’s leadership extended to marketing and business development initiatives, where she helped to optimize operations, develop effective case management systems, and author relevant blog posts and articles for the practice group.

During her time at Davidson College, Danya was awarded a grant to conduct qualitative research on South Asian labor migration towards the Gulf Coast. She went to India, Bangladesh, and the UAE, where she interviewed 70 labor workers about their job experiences and reasons for migration. Danya used this research to write her honors thesis in Sociology on the intersections of globalization, impoverishment, and South Asian migration. Danya also worked as a Data Collector and Data Visualization Lead at the College Crisis Initiative (C2i) of Davidson College. Born out of the COVID-19 pandemic, C2i analyzes how institutions of higher education innovate in times of crises. Through C2i, Danya has collected data for the American Enterprise Institute, NPR, The New York Times, The Guardian, and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

With a strong passion for justice, Danya hopes to pursue law school in the future.