Malowney recalled. “It was incredible; I played all day, every day, against some of the best players in the country and beyond. I remember when the FIVB world pro tour came to Bondi for a three-day Grand Slam tournament. Day One, I was super fan, in awe of legends like Karch Kiraly. Day Two, I watched the women’s game more closely, and began to think ‘I could do this’. By the end of Day Three, I said to myself, ‘I am doing this”. So, I stepped up my training, got even better, went back to Canada, and voilà, I was finishing in the top #3 in the country!”

Still, Malowney couldn’t get to the Olympic level — beach volleyball became an Olympic sport in 1993 — by remaining in Canada. Interested in pursuing a master’s degree in International Business, she enrolled at the University of San Diego. Her typical day went like this: Ride bike to beach. Train. Ride home. Grab a burrito for lunch. Do homework. Take classes. Sleep. Rinse. Repeat.

The routine proved successful. She and her partner at the time qualified to represent Canada in the first-ever Olympic beach volleyball event at the Atlanta 1996 Games.

“Even though we didn’t finish well, it was an incredible, life-changing experience,” Malowney said. “We were part of something truly special, from the emotional Opening Ceremonies when Muhammad Ali lit the Olympic Flame, to being part of launching beach volleyball at the Olympics.”

What wasn’t special after Atlanta was the need to secure sponsorship if she was going to continue to pursue beach volleyball and make a go at Sydney 2000.

“I was flat broke after the Games,” Malowney shared. “I had drained my bank account training and travelling through the qualification journey. Back then you needed to regularly finish in the top 5 in the world to earn enough in prize money be ‘cash positive’ after expenses. Realistically, I didn’t think that would be me, and in the end, I decided not to make a run for Sydney.”

So, while she continued to compete at her favorite events on the world tour when she could, Malowney decided to embark on a marketing and communications career that took her from the irreverent men’s apparel brand No Fear! to iconic Canadian quick serve restaurant chain Tim Hortons to Olympic Spirit, a startup Olympic experiential museum of sorts, to global big wave surfing and to the Silicon Valley tech world.

“Pinger was an early voice-to-text startup back in the mid-2000s,” Malowney noted. “In 2006, I was also working with the event team producing the Mavericks Big Wave surf event just south of San Francisco, and Pinger was a sponsor. The problem was that, at least at that time, it was hard to get crowds of fans that concerned about the environment, even with the obvious problems of plastic ocean waste washing up on shore. Thankfully, Clif Bar, always focused on environmental sustainability, was also a sponsor. Together, we built environmental programming and content into their sponsorship activations, including on-site and broadcast communications, education, measurement, offsetting, and an event Green Team. It ended up being the first carbon neutral event of its kind.”

She then returned to Canada, pivoted to the world of ‘emergency restoration cleanup’ and, it turns out, the front lines of climate change.

“We handled cleanups for residential and business customers after disasters, including of course from extreme weather events,” said Malowney. “During my ten-year tenure we experienced first-hand the increasing frequency and severity of disaster events. Damage due to wildfires in Western Canada were increasing, as were flooding events in the east and southern U.S. In 1980’s, claims in Canada for natural disasters averaged about $CAN100 million annually; by the mid 2000’s, that had risen to $1 billion. Then, a few years later, the first $6 billion year. But those are just numbers. We also saw the worsening impacts on our employees, who were overworked and overstressed. And customers were often in shock; we tried to help them believe that things would be OK and then make sure that was the case.”

After a decade in emergency restoration, Malowney again pivoted in 2021, joining Won For All, a startup that helps athletes prepare for transition to their post-sports lives: “We help them understand how to leverage their strengths as an athlete while competing, and into their next chapters, whatever they may be.”