Avantika Rao is a native Californian and a California-licensed attorney, human rights activist and author.  Her primary focus is obtaining humanitarian immigration relief for immigrants.

• Ms. Rao obtained release for a jailed client who had survived being forced to labor in an Asian brothel after responding to an international employment ad.  Ms. Rao won asylum for the client, whom she assisted to obtain a green card years later.
• Ms. Rao applied for affirmative asylum seeker for an African woman threatened with genital cutting.
• Ms. Rao won affirmative asylum (political opinion) for a family from Haiti.
• Ms. Rao has successfully handled claims by persons persecuted based on gay or transgender identity in Latin America.
• Ms. Rao has won defensive asylum (political opinion) for multiple persons from China.
• After an initial rejection, Ms. Rao won a greencard for an adult derivative who had been omitted from the parent's VAWA application as a child.
• After years of attempts, Ms. Rao won a crime victim visa for a person paralyzed as a result of a felony assault.

Avantika Rao is admitted to practice in California and before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.  Ms. Rao is fluent in Hindi/Urdu and Spanish.  She also speaks limited Konkani, Marathi, Bhojpuri and French.

Ms. Rao assistant taught ethnic and gender studies at UC Davis and was an instructor at the King Hall Outreach Project, a program for disadvantaged pre-law students.  She has been an attorney at La Raza Centro Legal in San Francisco since March of 2007.

Ms. Rao has been a member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association since 2004.