Sarah Culberson

Princess Sarah Culberson was born in Morgantown, West Virginia, to an African father and a white mother. As an infant, she was put into foster care and then adopted by a loving white West Virginian family.

She grew up contemplating and dealing with questions about her identity and her biracial roots. She fell in love with theatre in early childhood and won an undergrad acting scholarship to West Virginia University. She earned her MFA at The American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco and joined the Los Angeles acting community.

Princess Sarah has danced and acted on stage as well as in films and TV. She has been a guest performer with the Urban Latin Dance Theater Company CONTRA-TIEMPO. However, her biggest role so far came when she decided to locate her biological parents. She learned that her biological mother died when she was just 11, and her father lived in a village in Sierra Leone, West Africa. From him she learned about her royal family, and that she is a Mahaloi, the granddaughter of a Paramount Chief, with the status of a princess. She also learned of the difficulties and privations of Sierra Leone’s people following a brutal 11-year civil war that ended in 2002.

Discovery of her unique heritage and her response to this new information changed her life forever. Now, as co-founder of the non-profit Sierra Leone Rising (formerly the Kposowa Foundation), she and many others work to support Education, Public Health and Female Empowerment in Sierra Leone.