Rajagopal-Durbin began her career in 2001 as an Intellectual Property Litigation Attorney at Fenwick & West. In 2003, she moved to Downey Brand LLP as a Civil Litigation Attorney. As a lawyer, she succeeded in a civil rights case against a major petroleum company on behalf of a Lakota employee who experienced race-based harassment, discrimination, and retaliatory termination. Another highlight in her law career was supporting tribal sovereignty for the Eastern Shoshone tribe. She argued for tribal jurisdiction over the original boundaries of the Wind River Reservation.

Initially pursuing traditional careers as an engineer and lawyer, Rajagopal-Durbin had exposure to environmental and natural resources law in the legal arena. After ten years of practicing law, she wanted to live in better alignment with her values and passion for the outdoors. Since childhood, she has had a deep connection with remote nature spaces, and in adulthood, she has found that being away from the trappings of her day-to-day life and in mountains and forests is where she feels closest to being present.

In 2010, she began working as the Diversity and Inclusion Manager at an environmental education nonprofit, the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS). Rajagopal-Durbin has a tenuous relationship with the term “environmental field,” as environmentalism in the U.S. and West has primarily been the purview of privileged people and has harmed Black, Indigenous, and other communities of color around the world. She thinks her work relates to “more-than-human nature,” a term introduced to her by Carolyn Finney.

NOLS is a majority-white environmental education space, and her six years as Diversity and Inclusion Manager galvanized her interest in continuing to work at the intersection of equity and the environment. Very few people who liked the activities she loved, such as hiking, climbing, and mountain biking, looked like her. She explored intersectional histories and learned why Black, Indigenous, and communities of color in the U.S. continue to be underrepresented in the field and face exclusion and lack of safety in the same wild places where she finds joy. Rajagopal-Durbin is devoted to serving as an agitator, advisor, and facilitator at the confluence of equity and the environment.

In 2015, Rajagopal-Durbin founded the Avarna Group, an organization dedicated to providing diversity, equity, and inclusion resources to environmental and social justice organizations. Since 2016, she has been a Field Instructor and Inclusion Manager at NOLS. At NOLS, Rajagopal-Durbin conceived and spearheaded the historic campaign - Expedition Denali: Inspiring Diversity in the Outdoors.

In 2017, Rajagopal-Durbin co-founded the People of the Global Majority in the Outdoors, Nature, and the Environment (PGM ONE), an affinity space for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color working who participate in US-based movements for environmental education, access, justice land sovereignty, conservation, climate justice, and food justice.

Some of Rajagopal-Durbin’s work has appeared in Sierra Magazine, the Adventure Gap book, Backpacker Magazine, the Outdoor Voices Podcast, and more. Rajagopal-Durbin received the 2019 Reb Gregg Wilderness Risk Management Award for exceptional leadership, service, and innovation in wilderness risk management.