Sarah Friar
CFO
OpenAI
Bio
Sarah Friar is the Chief Financial Officer of OpenAI. Before joining OpenAI, Sarah served as Chief Executive Officer of Nextdoor from 2018 to 2024, and as Chief Financial Officer of Block (formerly Square) between 2012 and 2018. Before her tenure at Block, Sarah served as SVP of Finance & Strategy at Salesforce, she held executive roles at Goldman Sachs and started her career at McKinsey in London and South Africa. Sarah currently sits on the board of directors of Walmart and Consensys, as well as on the advisory boards of HOPE Global, the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford and the Digital Economy Lab at Stanford University. She previously served as a director of Nextdoor, Slack and New Relic. She is the co-founder of Ladies Who Launch, a nonprofit that celebrates and empowers women entrepreneurs. Sarah graduated from the University of Oxford with a Masters of Engineering in Metallurgy, Economics, and Management and also from Stanford Graduate School of Business with an MBA.
Grace Beverley
Founder, TALA, SHREDDY & The Productivity Method
Co-Founder, Retrograde
Forbes 30U30
Bio
A serial entrepreneur, changemaker and digital broadcaster, Grace Beverley is an innovator by nature. Founder of activewear brand TALA, fitness tech brand Shreddy, and personal organisation brand The Productivity Method, and Co-Founder of AI company Retrograde, Beverley has a global following of over 3 million people. Grace has raised over $14m in Seed & Series A funding for TALA and Retrograde in rounds led by blue-chip venture capital funds. Beyond this, Grace is an established speaker and podcast host and was named first in Forbes 30 under 30’s retail and e-commerce list at age 23. Grace’s first book ‘Working Hard, Hardly Working’ was an instant Sunday Times No. 1 Bestseller. Her podcast of the same name has a reach of over 100 million people and hasn’t left Spotify’s Top 5 in the Business Charts.
Known for confronting big topics in an informal & accessible way, Grace is a leading voice on female funding, the representation of women in media, sustainable fashion and entry into entrepreneurship, which she has spoken about on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour, Bloomberg News and Vogue Business. However, despite tackling mammoth topics such as these, she’s always proving that you don’t need to take yourself too seriously to be a revered businesswoman.
Tech Hive Stage Speakers
Ben Colman
CEO and Co-Founder
Reality Defender
Efua Akumanyi
Co-CTO
Coding Black Females
Brendan Barry
CTO
Equal 1
Nabanita Roy
Senior Manager – Data Science, EY
Education Lead, Women in AI Ireland