Sala served in the Peace Corps in Ghana in 1998-2000, in Walewale and in Bonwere. In the first year she worked with women making shea butter to bring their products to a market for a better profit. In the second year, she worked in a kente weaver’s village to develop community-based tourism. During that year she submitted a proposal to UNESCO for the creation of a Kente cloth museum, preserving the centuries long history of the cloth and its weavers. She returned to Ghana in 2025 to see that the seed she planted had blossomed into a kente museum in 2018, Sala became a Board member of Rotarian Malaria Partners (now Malaria Partners International) to bring malaria eradication to Ghana.
Sala began the practice of meditation and mindfulness while in the Peace Corps with books written by a Buddhist nun, Pema Chodron. In 2010 and 2011 she lived and worked at the Shambhala Mountain Center in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, a Buddhist retreat and program center.
In 2025, she returned to Ghana after a 5 year gap. She is working with the Ghana head of Peace Jam, Wisdom Addo, to create a peace center for youth in Africa; with a doctor who works with the Ghana Health Service to create a center for testing and treating women for cervical and breast cancer and educating them on prevention.
Generous listening and storytelling and supporting youth are important components of all her efforts. As well as recognizing and supporting the wisdom and ingenuity of the people she works with.
When I was getting ready to go to Ghana in the Peace Corps, someone said to me “Don’t worry about all the things you can’t address, just do the best with your skills to address what you can change” Then I arrived, in 1998, more than 30 years after the Peace Corps came to Ghana. Almost immediately, I was meeting people who had made a successful career in government or business who said. “If it hadn’t been for my Peace Corps teacher many years ago, I wouldn’t be where I am today”. Those early Peace Corps teachers didn’t necessarily see the seeds they planted grow and bloom. Plant what you want to grow with no expectation that you may see the fruition. Nurture what you have planted. Think carefully about how it may grow. Do it because it matters.


