Grand Keynote
Grand Keynote
About This Talk
Speakers
Sarah Friar
CEO
Nextdoor
Nextdoor
Sarah is Nextdoor’s Chief Executive Officer. Before joining Nextdoor, Sarah served as CFO at Square, SVP of Finance & Strategy at Salesforce, and lead software analyst and Business Unit Leader at Goldman Sachs. Prior to serving as Nextdoor’s CEO, Sarah was CFO of Square. Under Sarah’s leadership, Square launched its initial public offering in 2015 and added $30B in market cap. Before her tenure at Square, Sarah served as SVP of Finance & Strategy at Salesforce. Sarah also held executive roles at Goldman Sachs, as well as leadership positions at McKinsey in both London and South Africa. Sarah sits on the boards of directors of Walmart and ConsenSys, as well as the advisory boards of HOPE Global and the Blavatnik School of Government. She is the co-founder of Ladies Who Launch, a nonprofit that celebrates and empowers women entrepreneurs. Sarah earned her MEng in Metallurgy, Economics, and Management from the University of Oxford and her MBA from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, where she graduated as an Arjay Miller scholar. She holds an honorary doctorate from Ulster University and in 2019 was granted an OBE from Queen Elizabeth II for services to entrepreneurship. Sarah is from Northern Ireland, has lived in South Africa, and now lives in Northern California with her husband and two children.
Chris Davis
Contributing Journalist
CIO.com
CIO.com
Chris Davis is a Partner at Metis Strategy, a strategy and management consulting firm specializing in the intersection of business strategy and technology. Chris is the Head of the firm's West Coast office, where he advises Fortune 500 executives on the strategic role that technology plays in differentiating the customer experience, developing new products, unlocking new business models, and improving organizational operations. Chris is a columnist for CIO.com and public speaker at graduate schools and technology leadership conferences. Chris also contributed to the research and methodology development for Peter High's books Getting to Nimble: How to Transform Your Company into a Digital Leader (Kogan Page, 2021), Implementing World Class IT Strategy: How IT Can Drive Organizational Innovation (Jossey -Bass, 2014), and World Class IT: Why Businesses Succeed When IT Triumphs (Jossey -Bass, 2009). Chris holds a B.A. in Economics from Georgetown University and an M.S. in the Management of IT from University of Virginia's McIntire School of Commerce.