Corry Colonna, C’99

Gold Standard

For Corry Colonna, C’99, the road from Saint Vincent College to the Olympic Games has been shaped by community and hospitality.

Today, Colonna serves with LA28, the organizing committee for the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games in Los Angeles. In his role as senior manager for workforce housing, he is responsible for securing accommodations for the massive workforce required to stage the Games.

The Olympics and Paralympics are expected to draw more than fifteen million spectators. To operate an event at that scale, Colonna explains, “We will need to bring in around 25,000 individuals from outside Southern California.” He likens the scale to “running nine Super Bowls a day for twenty-plus days in a row.” Colonna oversees the coordination of housing across nineteen colleges and universities, along with select hotels, helping ensure that the people behind the scenes can make the world’s largest athletic event run smoothly.

What excites him the most is the shared sense of purpose. “It is really exhilarating to work with so many people working toward the same goal,” he says. At the heart of his work remains a Benedictine value he first encountered at Saint Vincent: hospitality.

Colonna, who majored in English and minored in education, credits his experiences as a prefect and a residence hall director, combined with a twenty-one-year career in university housing, proved invaluable. Now, welcoming thousands to the Olympic and Paralympic movement means “welcoming them all into our home as we would welcome Christ into our homes”—a simple and powerful mission shaped at SVC and carried onto the world stage.