Prior to joining PHLP, Kappagoda worked at the East Bay Community Law Center (EBCLC), where she served first as a staff attorney in the health law practice and later as director of administration and policy. While at EBCLC she provided legal services in the areas of housing, access to health insurance, disability benefits and estate planning to low-income clients living with HIV/AIDS. She also planned programming for EBCLC's successful medical-legal partnership with Children's Hospital Oakland. The founder of AIDS Lanka, a multidisciplinary project that effectively advocated for increased access to HIV medications in Sri Lanka, Kappagoda has worked with the UC Office of the President and the San Francisco Department of Public Health. She graduated with high honors from UC Davis, and received her law degree from the UC Hastings College of the Law and her master's in public health from UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health.