Phala has been performing on the harp since she was four years old. A Suzuki trained harpist, she grew up studying with Mary Kay Waddington in Denver, CO. She moved to Ohio for college and studied with Alice Chalifoux and Yolanda Kondonassis at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, where she majored in Harp Performance and Music History. After graduating, she moved to California and continued her education at the California Institute of the Arts, where she studied Harp Performance with Susan Allen and Composition with James Tenney, combining her love of playing music with her love of writing music in the "Performer/Composer" program. She graduated with her MFA in the spring of 2003 and now lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota where she teaches harp at the MacPhail Center for Music!