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Janessa Ventura-Alvarenga: Wandering but not lost

Winter 2026

By Chance Wonsuk

Janessa's hometown: Winnipeg, Manitoba

When life took unexpected turns, Janessa Ventura-Alvarenga kept moving, driven by curiosity and purpose.

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Janessa Ventura-Alvarenga understands that life does not always go according to plan. But she has also learned that not knowing exactly where you’re going in the moment doesn’t mean you won’t eventually get to the right place.

A cancer survivor, Janessa spent years juggling treatments and schoolwork to complete a BA in English Literature at the University of Winnipeg in 2021. But her chances to celebrate both the remission of her illness and upcoming graduation were cut short with the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. With lockdowns and restrictions in place, making decisions about her future seemed impossible.

“When the pandemic hit, it hit hard,” she says. “Suddenly I wasn’t a patient, I wasn’t a student. I didn’t know who I was.”

Knowing she was uninterested in continuing her studies online, Janessa decided to work. And, she thought, if she was going to work, she might as well try something new. On a whim, she applied for jobs abroad, not knowing that her first experience living outside of Canada would change her life.

Janessa spent the next three years, on and off, living and working overseas as an educator. She travelled to Spain, where she says her first teaching experience was incredible. It prompted her to pursue her TEFL certification so that she would be able to teach English as a foreign language in other places internationally. She next moved to South Korea to teach English, with the hope she could recapture the magic of that first year in Spain.

Unfortunately, halfway through the school year, health concerns began to plague her. Her work was taxing and it was affecting her physical well-being.

Coming from a family that has always prioritized education, Janessa was also starting to think about what study opportunities might exist back in Canada. Taking several years off between her undergraduate degree and her next educational pursuit had never been the plan, pre-illness and pre-pandemic. She loved the thrill of adventure and discovering new places, but her health — and her family — seemed to be pulling her back to Canada.

Unsure what path to take, she made a deal with her parents: she would apply to the Master of Media in Journalism & Communication program, offered by Western University in London, Ontario. If accepted, she would return to Canada to complete her studies. But if rejected, she was free to see where the winds might take her. When she later learned she had been accepted to the MMJC program, she wasn’t disappointed. It felt as if the stars aligned.

“I was running on empty by then,” she says. “What I was doing didn’t feel sustainable. I needed a change.”

Janessa returned home, and after a few months of recuperation and rest, moved to London, where she found herself in instructor Mark Rayner’s first-term Digital Production Dojo class. Sitting among her new classmates – most of whom had only just graduated with their undergraduate degrees – Janessa felt old but undaunted.

“I remember in Mark’s class, he asked everyone, ‘who feels like an imposter?’ Everyone put their hand up, except me,” she says. “I have worked so hard. Everything I’ve done has been intentional, even when things didn’t go how I thought they would. I felt like I’d earned my spot in the program.”

The MMJC program was fast-paced and intense, but Janessa always felt like she was working towards something. She felt like she had rediscovered a dream that had long been overshadowed by things beyond her control.

In her final term of the program, she was presented with an exciting but impossible decision: should she pursue journalism or communications professionally? Promising pathways into both fields opened up for her. She was offered a coveted six-week fellowship with leading Canadian news outlet The Canadian Press (CP), while at the same time, a communications coordinator position with national charity Canadian Centre for Child Protection became available.

Never one to let opportunities pass her by, Janessa put her communications skills to work. She negotiated a permanent, full-time position at the charity with a start date that would allow her to first complete the six-week fellowship with CP.

“Options are great until you can’t make a decision,” she laughs. “But sometimes you don’t have to make that choice.”

Janessa finds her current work with the child protection agency meaningful and important. She draws on the skills she acquired in the MMJC program – in both journalism and communications – as she performs a range of tasks including managing social media posts, drafting press releases, and fielding media requests from outlets like Reuters and CBC.

Looking back on the winding path that brought her here, Janessa believes each experience she has had serves a purpose in the end. She trusts herself, her experiences, and her abilities to lead her to where she should be, even if there are detours along the way. Her message to those struggling with feelings of imposter syndrome, or feeling out of place, is simple: “You are here for a reason.”

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Profiles in the Meet Our Students section are written by students in the Master of Media in Journalism & Communication program, who are enrolled in MMJC 9604 - Corporate Communications.