Standing at the top of the track in Pyeongchang in 2018 for her very first Olympic bobsleigh run, Alysia Olsen, CIB’21, EMBA’26, wasn’t waiting for the moment to feel magical. She had trained for it to feel ordinary.
“It didn’t feel like anything,” she remembers. “There was no distraction, and that’s exactly what I wanted. It was just time to go to work.”
That mindset – eliminate distraction, rely on preparation, execute under pressure – is the same approach she carried into life after sport.
Olsen retired from bobsleigh in 2022, after a decade of competition and finishing sixth in the 2018 Olympics. She now works in sponsorship sales with the Calgary Flames and is completing her Executive MBA at Smith School of Business.
The shift, she says, wasn’t as jarring as it can be for many athletes, because the habits she built on the track translated directly into school and work.
“There are so many direct links between sport and business,” she says. “Navigating personalities, how you communicate, how you create a positive environment where everyone is encouraged to do their best. They’re a lot of the same skills.”
She points to time management and sacrifice as another parallel. The workload of an MBA, combined with a full-time job, forces tough choices, but that already felt familiar.
“The ability to know what to spend time on – and what’s not worth it – is so underrated and so relevant in business today,” she says. “And that’s also straight from high-performance sport.”
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Alysia Olsen, CIB’21, EMBA’26 (right), and Heather Moyse at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea. (Photo: supplied)
For another Queen’s alum, the shift to life after elite sport also began with a mindset shaped long before graduation.
Matt Hallat, AMBA’24, lost his leg to cancer when he was five, and an adaptive ski program near Vancouver introduced him to a sport that felt like freedom.
“I fell in love with going fast and flying down a hill,” he says.
That passion for ski racing eventually took him to three Paralympic Winter Games – Torino 2006, Vancouver/Whistler 2010, and Sochi 2014 – and a bronze medal at the 2015 Para-Alpine World Championships back home in B.C., where he retired.
Today, Hallat is the high-performance director for the Canadian Para-Alpine Ski Team. It’s a role in which he applies many of the same principles he relied on as an athlete, only now at the organizational and strategic level.
“There’s a Navy SEALs quote I love that goes, ‘Under pressure, you don’t rise to the occasion; you sink to the level of your training.’ Sport and business are the same. It’s the work behind the scenes, the routines, the building over time that ultimately leads to success.”
His shift into business wasn’t accidental. He grew up in a family of small business owners and helped his wife start a company. He pursued an MBA at Smith School of Business to deepen his skills and credibility.
“I love figuring out the puzzle,” he says. “In sport, you’re always trying to be a little bit better in every detail. And in business, getting those details right along the way can lead to more success.”
Matt Hallat, AMBA’24, at the 2010 Winter Paralympics in Vancouver/Whistler. (Photo: supplied)
Both Hallat and Olsen pursued business education at Smith Business through the school’s partnerships with the Canadian Olympic Committee and Canadian Paralympic Committee.
Smith Business is the Official National Business Education Partner for both organizations, and is a founding partner of Game Plan, Canada’s holistic athlete-support network. Through Game Plan Awards, eligible athletes can access full tuition for Smith Business’s professional graduate programs, MBA suite, and Certificate in Business.
Olsen jokes she was “the Game Plan poster child,” taking every course and service offered. She earned her Certificate in Business from Smith Business while competing – sometimes writing exams from Europe – then moved directly into the Executive MBA after retiring.
“Thanks to Game Plan, I really was ready,” she says. “Stepping into business felt like the next race, not a cliff.”
For Hallat, the MBA opened opportunities inside sport and beyond and brought new perspectives into a world that can be narrowly focused.
“I learned so much from my team,” he says. “That community is huge.”
With the Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games approaching, both alumni will look on from new vantage points: Olsen building her career with the Calgary Flames; Hallat on the sidelines in Italy, helping the next generation of athletes figure out the puzzle of success.
For them, life after competition isn’t an ending. It’s a continuation of the same mindset: set the goal, build the system, trust the work. And be ready when the moment comes.
