If there's one thing Canadians do without apologizing (that's rare for us), it's celebrating our athletes' success at the Olympics. However, once the Closing Ceremonies end, and the spotlights dim, what happens to our athletes? The answer: they disappear. They go back to training and, in the majority of their cases, living below the poverty line.

While that can't be fixed overnight, I've been working for years to raise the standard of living for Canadian athletes; however, the more I do, the more I see the harsh, underlying problem: we don't care about our athletes. Not because we don't want to, but because we don't really know them. And that's exactly why I started Athletes of Canada (AoC).

AoC's mission is to make our athletes more accessible to the average Canadian (especially in non-Olympic years) and to build a flourishing, significant community around them. Since launching in February 2017, we believe we've done that - and we're only gaining momentum.

In the first six months, our athletes' posts had reached over a million people in Canada, we raised thousands of dollars for local charities and we've been able to successfully bring together likeminded brands and athletes at the centre of it all.