Brilliant consultant Nina Kaiden Wright brokered some of Canada’s biggest arts sponsorship deals

Nina Kaiden Wright arrived at Canada Trust headquarters one day in the late 1990s hoping to negotiate an investment in the arts. Chris Armstrong, the financial company’s newly appointed chief marketing officer, was intrigued but not ready to sign a deal. Ms. Wright “pitched me on some cultural ideas. I think it might have been ballet, it could have been the opera,” Mr. Armstrong says. Canada Trust did not have a major cultural component to its brand at that time. Nor was it actively looking for one. But it did have a foundation called Friends of the Environment which supported Earth-friendly causes.