Sarah Friar

Sarah Jane Friar (born 24 December 1972 ) is a business executive from Northern Ireland who is the chief financial officer of OpenAI since June 2024. She was the chief executive officer of American technology company Nextdoor from 2018 through 2024, and was chief financial officer of Block, Inc. (formerly Square, Inc.) between 2012 and 2018.

Biography
Born in 1972, Friar grew up in the town of Sion Mills in Northern Ireland. She attended Strabane Grammar School. She graduated from the University of Oxford and Stanford Graduate School of Business. She was an analyst for McKinsey, a managing director in equity research at Goldman Sachs, and a senior vice president of finance and strategy at Salesforce before becoming chief financial officer (CFO) at Square in 2012, and then joining Nextdoor, a hyperlocal social networking service for neighborhoods, as the CEO in 2018. She led the company public through a special-purpose acquisition company in 2021. Nextdoor announced Friar would step down as CEO in mid-2024. In June 2024, she joined OpenAI, the artificial intelligence research organization that develops ChatGPT, as its first CFO.

She is on the board of Walmart and ConsenSys, and previously on Slack Technologies and New Relic's boards.

She received a honorary Doctor of Science degree from Ulster University in 2018. In 2019, she was granted an Order of the British Empire from Queen Elizabeth II for her commitment to entrepreneurship and financial services.

Friar is married to David Riley, a former hedge fund partner. The couple has a daughter and son. She lives in Marin County, California.