Chrystia Freeland

As Canada’s deputy prime minister and minister of finance, Chrystia Freeland has had unparalleled access to international relations at the highest levels—in Washington, New York, Brussels, Berlin, and Beijing—while also traversing the union halls and neighborhood porches where elected politicians test their policies and win support for them. She’s seen firsthand how America has struggled to identify the role it wants to play on the international stage, and what that uncertainty has done to its citizens and neighbors.

In this honest, inspiring keynote, she draws on her storied career, as well as her book "Unreliable Boyfriend,' to describe the inner life of a political leader with unusual skill and insight. She shows us how relationships and deals are forged—how coalitions are built and how they fall apart. We see the challenge of navigating between progressives and populist plutocrats, and what happens when policies don’t deliver for the working people who inspired them. It’s a unique look into the challenges and future of America, as well as her own story of life as an outsider and an insider, as a journalist and a politician, an activist and a woman—and as a Canadian with a deeper understanding of America’s potential than many of its own leaders seem to possess.