Janalynn Baldhead spent her early life learning to adapt. Taken into foster care at just two years old, she grew up alongside her younger siblings as each of them entered the system due to their mother’s struggles with addiction and unsafe relationships. When Janalynn was seven, she moved into the place that would become her steady home all the way until nineteen, the first real stability she had ever known.

Adulthood brought its own challenges. After aging out of care, Janalynn fell in with the wrong crowd and spent several years struggling but over time she began finding her way back to herself, entering sobriety and starting to rebuild her life and becoming a mother to two beautiful children. To support her family, Janalynn worked in nearly every field, sales, customer service, retail, food service, and cleaning, before finally finding her footing at the University of Alberta. She has now spent three years there as a Project Coordinator, handling administrative and event coordination work that she genuinely enjoys.

In her late 30s, she achieved milestones that once felt out of reach: earning her driver’s licence, buying a car, and most recently becoming a homeowner. These accomplishments are more than personal wins, they’re generational firsts. For Janalynn, whose family faced deep challenges, these are achievements she carries with pride.

Before joining IndigiTAL, Janalynn had no experience with programming. She knew basic computer tools, but coding was a completely different world. In the beginning, she felt lost, unsure even of what questions to ask. But her instructors were patient and hands-on, guiding her through each lesson with screen-sharing, explanations, and consistent encouragement. Her classmates helped too, offering reassurance at the exact moments she needed it.

She came across IndigiTAL through a Facebook post shared by her Nation. Already working in an administrative role, she figured it wouldn’t hurt to try something new. What she didn’t expect was to find a skill she genuinely enjoyed, and one that sparked a vision for the future.

Through the program, Janalynn learned how to code without relying on AI, a skill she takes pride in, especially as technology increasingly automates the basics. For her final project, she created a “Word of the Day” generator for Plains Cree. By entering a month number, users could receive a randomly generated Cree word to learn. It was a meaningful project that combined her new skills with her desire to help future generations connect through language.

She enjoyed experimenting with Python, from writing math-based code to playing with the turtle module. Watching the turtle draw a flower-of-life pattern became one of her favourite moments. She was also deeply impacted by the guest speakers. Their stories about working in tech, building businesses, and handling finances were inspiring, and she walked away with answers to questions she had carried for years.

For anyone who is curious about programs like IndigiTAL, “Just do it,” Janalynn says, “Do it for yourself, get your brain in a different mind space and learn something you could bring to any table as your hidden talent, and who knows? You may enjoy it more than you think you would.” Learning to code felt like learning a new language, confusing at times, but incredibly rewarding once things began to click.

Her dream now is to continue refining her Cree language program into a fully developed app that can support communities in reconnecting with their language. Janalynn plans to continue her work in administration, consider returning to school, and eventually start her own business. Above all, she wants to give her children the kind of future she once could only imagine.

With every step forward, through resilience, learning, and courage, Janalynn is already creating that future.