Emily Wright '09
Account Executive, Canadian Olympic Committee
B.A., Wilfrid Laurier University

Imagine being in PyeongChang, in Canada House in the Olympic Village, cheering on each Team Canada Olympian as they return from their events. For Emily Wright, it comes with the job.

After graduating from Greenwood in 2009, Emily went to Wilfrid Laurier University and studied History, but felt that sports was really her calling. “I definitely knew that I always wanted a career in sports,” she said. “It’s in my blood.”

So, when an internship opened up at Special Olympics Canada, she jumped on the chance. The work she did with SOC as a Marketing and Communications intern melded perfectly with her later career move to the Canadian Olympic Committee. According to Emily, “While Special Olympics and the Olympics are very different, the overarching message remains very similar: through the power of sport you can transform lives.”

Emily now works for the COC as an Accounts Executive, where she manages a portfolio of marketing partners, including big names like Canadian Tire, Bell, Toyota, and Coca-Cola.

“The COC is actually 90% privately funded by our partners,” Emily said. This means that the work she does in to maintain existing partnerships and build new ones is essential to making sure the COC can provide Team Canada with everything our athletes need at the Olympics.

She describes her work as being “part of the team behind the Team.”

PyeongChang was Emily’s second Olympics and third major sporting event that she had worked on through her role at the Canadian Olympic Committee. She worked on the Pan Am Games in Toronto in 2015, the 2016 Rio Olympics, and was in PyeongChang to support Team Canada in the recent 2018 Olympics.

In PyeongChang, she was based out of Canada House, in the heart of the Olympic Village. “Many of my partners have invested incrementally in the Canada Olympic House, so I love being able to see all the months of hard work come to life and be enjoyed by Olympians, their family and friends, and the public. We recently had a concert [...] where the Arkells played, and that was definitely one of those ‘Wow’ moments,” Emily said.

The Olympics was full of “wow moments” for Emily. The energy in the air was palpable, and there was a general sense of, as Emily described it, “being part of something bigger than yourself.”

It is particularly special being right in Canada House, because that is where Olympians come after competing in their events. Each time one enters, “without being prompted, the entire house stands up to applaud them. Being over here with Team Canada, I know more than ever how incredibly lucky we all are to call ourselves Canadian.”

Emily’s love of sports was well supported at Greenwood. “At Greenwood, I was able to participate in every sport I could get my hands on,” she said. Emily captained the U-20 Girls Basketball team and, in Grade 12, coached the U14 team.

“Being able to dedicate time to sport during my time at Greenwood was really beneficial,” she said. “I truly believe that Greenwood affected my career path, [and] I believe it is where I truly came into my own”

“I will always remember Kilcoo and the amazing Outdoor Education trips so fondly.”

With the PyeongChang Olympics wrapped up, Emily will be returning to Canada. The COC is already thinking about the 2020 summer games, where Emily will be able to experience those “wow moments” again, and once again bring that magic to Canadians.

“Everyone, and I mean everyone in the world has a capacity to make a difference,” she said. “You just need to decide what kind of difference you want to make.”