Janna Gutenberg studied Regional Studies of Latin America and Political Science at the Universities of Cologne, Guadalajara and Buenos Aires. She wrote her master's thesis on „New Social Movements in Latin America“ at the Global South Studies Center (GSSC) Cologne.
After her graduation she conducted integration courses for the Internationaler Bund (IB) as a trained teacher of German as a second language and gave Content and Language Integrated Learning classes in the subjects of politics and mathematics at a vocational college. In 2017 she started working fpr the German Trade Union Federation (DGB). At DGB Bildungswerk Bund she collaborated on a project on the recognition of foreign professional qualifications as well as on the project MENTO, which is committed to the promotion of literacy and basic education of employees and raises awareness among company actors. 
In April, she started as a research associate at the Mercator Institute and principally works for the project COMeIN - Communities of Practice (CoP) for Innovative Teacher Education North Rhine-Westphalia, which aims to professionalize digitization-related competencies of teachers. As a member of the CoP German as a Second Language/ Content and Language Integrated Learning classes, she deals with language education under the conditions of digitality and develops concepts and digital content for teacher training as Open Educational Resources (OER).

She is also the contact person in the BiSS-Transfer project for state coordination and networks and is involved in networking for successful and sustainable transfer processes in language education.

In addition to her work at the Mercator Institute she is a court-authorized translator for Spanish.