Sunalini is a Food Technologist and has spent more than 50 years in coffee in the arena of quality. She has worked as Director (Quality) at the Coffee Board of India, as a quality evaluator, trainer, professor, coffee blender, developer of green coffee brands, judge in coffee competitions, writer of coffee articles and even as a coffee guide to new coffee entrepreneurs. She is heading the sensory lab for coffee "Coffeelab", which she helped to set up in 1996 in Bangalore, India.

She lectures and teaches at the Universita del Cafe de Trieste under the Ernesto Illy Foundation and the University of Trieste, Italy. She is on the Board of Trustees of the Coffee Quality Institute, USA, an Independent Director on the Board of Tata Coffee, which is Asia's largest integrated Coffee Company and one of the foremost producers of Specialty Coffee in India and the President of the Women's Coffee Alliance India, which is affiliated to the International Women's Coffee Alliance, USA.