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
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.
