Charanya Krishnawami

Senior Director For Democracy

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Charanya Krishnaswami is Senior Director for Democracy at Governors Safeguarding Democracy (GSD).

Prior to joining GSD, Charanya was appointed to serve as Senior Counselor to the U.S. Secretary at the Department of Homeland Security, where she advised department leadership and collaborated closely with interagency, state, and local partners on immigration policy, including regulatory, legal, and operational matters. Charanya previously led U.S.-facing policy advocacy on human rights issues in the Americas at Amnesty International USA and worked on refugee protection matters in the United States and Caribbean region at the U.N. Refugee Agency. Before that, she litigated before state and federal courts on issues related to detention, children’s legal representation, and asylum, first as a Yale Public Interest Fellow at the Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network in Colorado, and then as the Peter and Patricia Gruber Fellow in Global Justice at Public Counsel in Los Angeles, California. Charanya clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit for the late Hon. Raymond C. Fisher. She received her law degree from Yale Law School, and her undergraduate degrees from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, where she was a President’s Scholar. Charanya’s writing has appeared in the Harvard Law Review and the Washington Post, among other outlets.