Cynthia Shanmugalingam is a British-Sri Lankan cook who grew up in Coventry in the UK, visiting Sri Lanka every childhood holiday and eating dishes adapted by her mother and grandmother at home.

She has run pop-ups and street food stalls since 2014 and is the founder of a social enterprise street food truck Kitchenette Karts, which helps ex-offenders get a start in the food industry. In 2019 she started doing Sri Lankan Rambutan pop-ups, which she plans to develop into a restaurant. She has been featured on BBC news and WePresent alongside a spectrum of print media.