Jessica Janzen didn't discover joy when life got hard. She was raised to understand it long before she had words for it.
Growing up on a farm, Jessica learned early that life responds to how it's nurtured. Crops don't grow because you demand they do. Animals don't thrive because you force them to. Everything responds to care, rhythm, attention, and energy. And in her family, there was a quiet understanding that we are built to do hard things.
That belief stayed with her.
Years later, in her corporate career at SAP, Jessica was handed a struggling business many believed couldn't be turned around. She didn't start with strategy decks or pressure tactics. She focused on people: how they felt, how they connected, and the energy they brought into the work. The business turned.
Then came the moment that tested everything she believed. When Jessica and her husband learned their two-month-old son, Lewiston, had a terminal disease and only months to live, they made a radical decision: the time they had left with him would not be defined only by grief. It would also be defined by joy.
For months, Jessica lived in a hospital room as her son fought for his life. In that space, she brought music, laughter, connection, and dance parties into a place defined by clinical routine. Not after the hardship. Not once things got easier. In the middle of it.
That decision led to the creation of the Love for Lewiston Foundation, which has raised more than $4 million supporting families living with SMA and the Alberta Children's Hospital Foundation. Its advocacy also helped bring newborn screening for SMA to every child born in Canada.
This is what makes Jessica different as a keynote speaker: she doesn't teach resilience as something we access after we break. She teaches that we are built for hard things, and that joy is not the reward at the end of the journey, but the resource that expands our capacity within it.
Because we are not fragile in the face of challenges. We are far more capable than we've been led to believe. We are BUILT FOR JOY. And we are built to do hard things.
