Tala is a member of the Sumacher First Nation in Kalinga, Philippines. She got involved in peacebuilding in 2008 and currently works with Peacebuilders Community Inc. (PBCI). Her passion is to center indigenous peoples’ and women’s voices and narratives in peacebuilding.

Her work with PBCI is focused on community organizing and advocacy to local leaders to adopt the Peace and Reconciliation framework in their organizations. She helps develop the local communities’ own vision for peace, crafting contextually-based, culturally-sensitive strategies to address peace issues in their place. Her approach in peacebuilding is intensive listening and intentional relationship-building with the people most impacted by injustices. She believes that peacebuilding should be firmly grounded on people’s lived experiences, taking care to be sensitive to power differences and relations.

In 2023, she started her own social enterprise called Kape de Lin-awa to support her advocacy and to operationalize the concept of indigenization of social entrepreneurship as a way of decolonization.