Toronto’s 50 Most Influential: #38, Chrystia Freeland

Toronto’s 50 Most Influential: #38, Chrystia Freeland

Our annual ranking of the people whose smarts, connections and clout are changing the city as we know it

(Image: Jason Gordon)

Chrystia Freeland

Parliament Hill

38 Freeland may have the most impressive resumé in Canadian politics. She’s a Harvard-educated former Rhodes Scholar who speaks five languages and has climbed to the top of newsrooms at the Globe and Mail, the Financial Times and Thomson Reuters. Her 2012 book, Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else, was a bestseller. She’s undefeated in politics, her most recent win in October against NDP candidate Jennifer Hollett, a former MuchMusic VJ. Freeland showed a fearlessness (plus a savvy knack for making the nightly news) in August when she crashed the men’s-only ­Cambridge Club, where Joe Oliver was supposed to be speaking. She brings a loaded Rolodex to the Centre Block, where she’ll be minister of international trade.

Friends in High Places:

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg (they went to college together); Larry Summers, former ­Harvard president and long-time advisor to Clinton and Obama.

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