Presenter

Marian Ruston

Proprietor, Marian Ruston Consulting

Marian Ruston is a Consultant who has held senior positions in the business and arts communities in Europe and Canada.

Her business career spans Advertising, Public Relations, Insurance and Accountancy. Immediately prior to her arrival in Canada, she spent six years in the UK as Director of the largest region for Arts & Business (A&B), then the world’s foremost organization for the creation of partnerships between business and the arts. She led a team of eight across two offices and was a member of A&B’s Senior Management Team. She has spoken on business-arts partnerships at international conferences in Hungary, Brazil and Malaysia.

Since coming to Canada, Marian worked at Harbourfront Centre and the Ontario College of Art & Design University before starting her own consulting practice where clients have included: Arts for Children and Youth (now VIBE Arts), Business for the Arts, Canadian Wind Energy Association, Curry’s Art Store, Niagara Region, Oolagen Community Services, Ontario Culture Days, Theatre Ontario, The Canadian Art Foundation, The Stratford Festival. For seven years she served as the National Sponsorship Coach and Lead Curriculum Developer for Business for the Arts, creating an e-Learning Sponsorship Series and a Live Sponsorship Workshop Series, which she also delivered nationally.

Marian has served on the jury of the Compass Program for the Ontario Arts Council; the Development Committee for the 2011 International Society of the Performing Arts (ISPA) Congress and as a member of the Board of Advisers for the Charity Communications Network.