Olympian Turned Journalism Grad Finds a Home on the Other Side of the Microphone

In late June, when organizers of this summer’s Tokyo Olympics announced that up to 10,000 local spectators would be allowed to attend events at the Games, a decision that was later reversed, the phone lines lit up at the Canadian Olympic Committee (COC) office.

Well, that’s what would’ve happened in normal times.

This year, with COVID-19 impacting everything from global health and the economy to how people do their jobs every day, it meant that Thomas Hall, the COC’s director of communications and media relations, and his team had to respond to a barrage of calls, emails and texts from their homes in Ottawa and Toronto.

Credit: Canadian Press/Canadian Olympic Committee, Andre Forget

“It’s been extremely demanding,” says Hall, an Olympian who won a bronze medal as a sprint canoe paddler at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, went back to school to earn a master’s degree in journalism from Carleton University in 2015 and became the COC’s communications lead this past January.

Read full story in the Carleton Newsroom…