Sarah Friar

Sarah Friar took Square public. Then she took Nextdoor public. And now she’s the CFO of OpenAI.

Sarah Friar grew up in Sion Mills, a small town in Northern Ireland.

Her first career milestone? Winning a scholarship from Arthur Andersen through a local competition.

She studied Metallurgy, Economics, and Management at Oxford.

Then worked at Ashanti Goldfields, on-site at a gold mine in Ghana.

After that: McKinsey in London and South Africa.

Then: Goldman Sachs, where she rose to Managing Director in equity research.

Then: Salesforce, as SVP of Finance & Strategy.

And in 2012, she joined Square (now Block) as Chief Financial Officer.

At the time, it was a fledgling fintech company trying to democratize payments.

Under her financial leadership, Square went public in 2015.

But she didn’t just take it public.

She helped add $30 billion in market cap.

Then, in 2018, she took on a completely different challenge: CEO of Nextdoor, a hyperlocal social network that people mocked as digital gossip.

But Friar saw the opportunity for something bigger…

A platform that connects neighbors, small businesses, public agencies, and local institutions.

A place to build trust. Digitally and in real life.

She helped grow the business and took it public in 2021 under the ticker NYSE: KIND.

Not through a traditional IPO, but via SPAC.

Nextdoor reached the public markets with a mission-driven narrative: build stronger, more resilient communities.

By 2024, she’d done what most leaders never do once. Twice.

So she pivoted again.

This time, to artificial intelligence.

In June 2024, she became Chief Financial Officer of OpenAI.

The company behind ChatGPT needed a CFO who could manage growth at scale, handle investor relations at the highest levels, and bring financial rigor to a fast-moving innovation engine.

Sarah Friar was the clear pick.

But she’s never just been about bottom lines.

Friar is co-founder of Ladies Who Launch, a nonprofit that supports women and non-binary entrepreneurs through funding, mentorship, and community.

She serves on the boards of Walmart and ConsenSys, and previously sat on the boards of Slack, New Relic, and three Dragoneer SPACs.

She advises Operation HOPE, Stanford’s Digital Economy Lab, and the Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford.

And in 2019, Queen Elizabeth II awarded her an Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to entrepreneurship and financial services.