Meet our newest Board members: Deshani Ellis, Publicity & Membership Director; and Rajesh Mandlekar, OC Events Director. Welcome!
Deshani Ellis is an associate in Quinn Emanuel’s Los Angeles office. Her practice focuses on complex commercial litigation, including in areas of intellectual property and antitrust matters. Prior to that, Deshani worked at Jones Day, where she represented clients in a range of complex litigation matters, including multidistrict litigation. Deshani worked as a judicial clerk to the Honorable Halil Suleyman Ozerden in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi and she served as a judicial clerk for the Honorable Mark J. Dinsmore in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Indiana.
Deshani received her J.D. with honors from the University of California, Irvine School of Law. While she was in law school, she served as an editor of the UC Irvine Law Review and served as a legal extern for the Office of Chief Legal Counsel, Internal Revenue Service. While in law school, she also participated in the Community and Economic Development Clinic and the Intellectual Property, Arts, and Technology Clinic. Prior to attending law school, Deshani served as a Teach for America corps member in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Rajesh “Ray” Mandlekar represents clients in civil litigation matters concerning startups, investment, business and employment disputes. He has represented individuals and institutions in high-profile cases across the country, including those concerning Enron, Lehman Brothers, Lloyd’s of London and AT&T. He also represented, along with Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP, the Stanford student who came up with the idea of ephemeral messaging in his partnership dispute with the other co-founders of Snap, Inc. Mr. Mandlekar is a Chicago native who lives in Newport Beach, California.