Dons' Summer Highlights - Kiera O'Malley '25 and Matthew Korniczky '24

☀️Dons’ Summer Highlights☀️ Two weeks ago, multiple Cathedral Catholic students had the opportunity to attend and volunteer at the Hugh O’Brien Youth (HOBY) Leadership Seminar held at the University of San Diego. Kiera O’Malley ‘25 was one of our Dons who joined 150 other sophomores from across Southern California to listen to panels, speakers and learn how to lead change in their communities! Fellow Don Matthew Korniczky ‘24 served as one of the event leaders. Kiera and Matthew both credit Cathedral Catholic’s focus on service for inspiring them to partake in the conference as both a participant and a leader. Beyond CCHS, Kiera hopes to pursue a career path in business and biology, and Matthew plans to major in business in order to work in the nonprofit sector. Both of them hope to create a lasting impact on their communities.

Kiera shares, “The HOBY state seminar is a program that invites rising juniors around SoCal to bring change and leadership into their communities. During the 3 days at USD, we exchanged ideas with ambassadors from all over SoCal, listened to panels and speakers who inspired us to embark on our own ‘wild ideas,’ and created solutions to common problems our communities face constantly to name a few.” They also completed service projects at the conference and brainstormed ideas with other teens about how to continue serving their schools and neighborhoods. Kiera says that Cathedral Catholic’s core values of service and giving back to the community inspired her to attend the HOBY conference, and that she feels inspired to spark change in CCHS and the greater San Diego area. After attending the HOBY seminar last year, Matthew Korniczky ‘24 returned as a volunteer at the conference to lead a group of rising juniors through the weekend’s activities! He credits the awesome teachers and the diversity of service opportunities at CCHS for inspiring him to volunteer, and said “ It was really satisfying to see all of the attendees become inspired to make an impact in their own communities, as well as to meet others from different cities and empathize with the issues that affect different counties.”

At Cathedral Catholic, Kiera is involved with the California Scholarship Federation, National Honor Society and the Crew Team. Matthew is a part of CCTV, National Honor Society, Ambassadors, Crew and Cathedral Catholic’s TEDx Planning Committee.

Kiera (front left) and her group (photo credit: HOBY SoCal)

Kiera (front, second from left) and her group are dressed up for the closing presentation (photo credit: HOBY SoCal).

Matthew (left) helps with check in (photo credit: HOBY SoCal)

Matthew leads a group of rising juniors (photo credit: HOBY SoCal)