Sarah Friar OBE
Friar in 2018
Born	Sarah Jane Friar (1972-12-24)24 December 1972 (age 52) Sion Mills,County Tyrone,Northern Ireland
Nationality	American,British,Irish
Education	St Anne's College, Oxford (MEng) Stanford University (MBA)
Occupation	Business executive
Known for	CFO ofOpenAI Former CEO ofNextdoor Former CFO ofSquare, Inc.
Children	2

Sarah Jane FriarOBE (born 24 December 1972^[1]) is an Irish-American business executive who is the chief financial officer ofOpenAI since June 2024.^[2] She was the chief executive officer of American technology companyNextdoor from 2018 through 2024,^[3] and was chief financial officer ofBlock, Inc. (formerly Square, Inc.) between 2012 and 2018.^[4][5][6]

Born in 1972, Friar grew up in the town ofSion Mills inNorthern Ireland.^[7][1] She attendedStrabane Grammar School.^[8] Friar won a scholarship from the accounting firmArthur Andersen after entering a competition; she then worked there for a year before pursuing engineering studies atUniversity of Oxford.^[9] She studied metallurgy, economics, and management at Oxford, and then completed an MBA from theStanford Graduate School of Business where she was an Arjay Miller scholar.^[1][10]

She was an analyst forMcKinsey in South Africa,^[11] a managing director in equity research atGoldman Sachs, and a senior vice president of finance and strategy atSalesforce^[12] before becomingchief financial officer (CFO) atSquare in 2012,^[13][14][15] and then joining Nextdoor, a hyperlocal social networking service for neighborhoods, as the CEO in 2018. She led the companypublic through aspecial-purpose acquisition company in 2021.^[16] Nextdoor announced Friar would step down as CEO in mid-2024.^[17] In June 2024, she joinedOpenAI, the artificial intelligence research organization that developsChatGPT, as its first CFO.^[2]

She is on the board ofWalmart andConsenSys,^[18][19] and previously onSlack Technologies andNew Relic's boards.^[20] She also co-chairs Stanford's Digital Economy Lab and runs Ladies Who Launch, a non-profit focused on female entrepreneurs that she co-founded.^[21][22][5]

She received a honorary Doctor of Science degree fromUlster University in 2018.^[23] In 2019, she was granted anOrder of the British Empire fromQueen Elizabeth II for her commitment to entrepreneurship and financial services.^[24][25]

Friar is married to David Riley, a formerhedge fund partner.^[12] The couple has a daughter and son.^[26] She lives inMarin County, California.^[1]

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