Upon graduating in Sociology, Upali counts more than 25 years of experience in the field of development and peacebuilding. His interest and work relating to peacebuilding and conflict resolution started in 1983 with research work titled “An Analysis of Communal Crisis of Sri Lanka” tracing the history and evolution of the conflict and discussing the relative merits of potential interventions. In collaboration with leading local NGOs in peacebuilding, he was instrumental in facilitating an emerging People’s Movement dealing with peacebuilding and good governance issues in Sri Lanka. He has a wide range of hands-on experience in facilitating multi-track, multi-stakeholder engagement strategy and building capacity for multi-stakeholder participation in the peace process of Sri Lanka from the grassroots to the policy-making level. For three years, he has successfully led a change management process in 9 South Asian and South East Asian Country Offices of Care International extensively travelling in the region contributing to its organisational evolution process of moving from needs based programming to rights based programming.