As associate editor and investigative news chief at the Manila Times, she directed a numerous projects that won awards, including a series about Filipino children who suffered from tuberculosis and the telecommunications firms who ignored a consumer's problems; battered women, prostituted children and the fall of the Moro Islamic Liberation Fronts.
She also worked as a columnist for the Manila Times, and became editor-in-chief of Philippines Graphic newsweekly magazine wherein she wrote her JVO prize-winning series.
[3] She was selected in 2005 as an [1] international fellow of the John S Knight Professional Journalism Fellowships in Stanford University.
She is one of the 11 children of the late Dr. Lourdes Llavore, a pediatrician and journalist Rolando "Rolly" Espina, who died on December 28, 2017.
[7] Espina-Varona, together with Zena Bernardo, Jean Enriquez, Mae Paner founded the Babae Ako movement (transl.