Before CalArts, Ravi lived in New York City for 18 years. He held multiple leadership roles at Purchase College, State University of New York (SUNY Purchase), taught students from kindergarten through university at various institutions, and worked with faculty and artists on multimedia projects at Yale University and The Rockefeller University.
Ravi has degrees from Yale and the University of Oklahoma and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts (UK) in 2010. He has served on and has led various nonprofit boards supporting media, social justice, diversity, the arts, and education worldwide. He has been a member of the TONY Awards Nominating Committee, and serves on many other selection panels that provide assistance, scholarship, fellowships, and recognition to artists and arts organizations. He is married to Lucy Tucker Yates, who works in opera as a dramaturge, conductor, librettist, Italian specialist, translator, and coach, and they have two young sons ages 8 and 11.