Lakshmi Sarma Ramani

Attorney, Member of the Firm &
Director of Firm Compliance and Ethics
Email: lsramani@outsidegc.com
See Lakshmi's blog posts

Lakshmi Sarma Ramani is a Member of the Firm and serves as its Director of Compliance and Ethics.

Lakshmi joined the firm in 2017 and brings over 20 years of significant transactional experience as both a senior legal executive and private practitioner representing a wide range of for-profit and non-profit companies. Lakshmi's clients include, among others:

• American Council on Education
• American Counseling Association
• American Friends of the Hebrew University
• American Technion Society
• Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center (Building resilience solutions to climate change, migration, and security challenges by 2030)
• Commando (Retail/E-Commerce)
• Depop (Retail Platform)
• Evidence Action (Scaling evidence-based and cost-effective programs to reduce the burden of poverty).
• Framebridge (Retail/E-Commerce)
• Hillel International (Enriching the lives of Jewish students so that they may enrich the Jewish people and the world) 
• ID Insight (Improving lives with data and science)
  
• Mimecast (Enterprise Tech and Security)
• Optical Society of America
• Partnership for a Healthier America (Devoted to transforming the food landscape in pursuit of health equity)
• The Termeer Foundation (Connecting life science innovators and catalyzing the creation of new medicines)
• TripScout (Consumer technology and platform)
• Understood for All (Supporting the 1 in 5 with learning and thinking differences)
• Vox Media (Media/Entertainment)
• Zoovu (Advertising/Marketing Technology)

Lakshmi’s clients appreciate her ability to deliver practical legal advice in a clear and understandable way so that they can reach their business goals while appropriately understanding and assessing potential risks. She also adds value by offering performance coaching to in-house counsel and executive clients who may be seeking support with their own professional goals.

She regularly handles a full range of legal matters, including

• Strategic and tactical advice and counsel to privately-held and charitable U.S. and global corporations
• Cross-border transaction and expansion structures and operational risk analysis
• Commercial and marketing contracts, including SaaS and various vendor agreements
• Employment-related matters, including severance agreements, policies and PEOs
• Nonprofit corporate governance and board support and counsel
• Cybersecurity and privacy, including drafting SMS disclosures and privacy policies and children’s privacy matters
• Marketing and prize promotions, including licensing, charitable sales promotions, contests and sweepstakes
• Nonprofit fundraising and strategic and crisis communications advice
• Exempt organization finance, private equity investment and audit support
• Agreements and MOUs with U.S. federal, state, and local government agencies, foreign government agencies, international funding organizations, and U.S. and foreign universities
• Global outside counsel network and management
• Event and conference contracts, including hotels, convention center and catering contracts
• Talent matters, including speaker and performance agreements
• Credentialing and Accreditation matters

Before joining Outside GC, Lakshmi served as General Counsel and Assistant Secretary at the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), the largest early childhood professional association and the largest early childhood program and higher educational degree accrediting organization in the country with over 50 affiliates, where she was responsible for all legal, compliance, governance and privacy matters. Lakshmi was a key partner in overhauling NAEYC’s governance and operational policies and procedures, and served as the executive liaison to the newly formed Audit Committee. Prior to NAEYC, Lakshmi served as the lead global attorney for The Nature Conservancy (TNC), for the marketing, membership, philanthropy, IT, finance and governance functions.

Lakshmi began her legal career as an attorney with the Pennsylvania Office of General Counsel, assigned to the Pennsylvania Department of Revenue, where she advised on personal income tax, sales and use tax and realty transfer tax matters. Lakshmi also practiced public finance and tax law with the law firm, Tillinghast Licht LLP, focusing on representing municipalities, state agencies and universities in multi-million-dollar tax-exempt bond transactions throughout the state of Rhode Island and providing counsel to charitable organizations.

Lakshmi also worked in-house at Sprint Nextel, where she negotiated spectrum leases and supported the reconfiguration of public safety spectrum bandwidth after 9/11.

Lakshmi holds a B.A. in English (African American Women’s Literature) from Clark University and a J.D. from the Temple University Beasley School of Law, where she was Managing Editor of the Temple International and Comparative Law Journal. She is a graduate of The Mercersburg Academy, a boarding school in Pennsylvania. Lakshmi is a member of the bar in Maryland, the District of Columbia, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Rhode Island (inactive) and is also admitted to practice in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania and the US. District Court for the District of New Jersey.