16 Jan 2025 · 28m · Sean Brown, Lareina Yee, Sarah Friar · 19 quoted facts
OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar argues that AI is turning finance from a backward-looking record-keeper into a forward-looking source of business insight. She says tools like ChatGPT already speed up closing the books, answering investor questions and writing code. She also argues AI can strengthen communities and democracy, not just cut costs, and that leaders should focus on impact rather than titles.
The central tension is between AI as a task-saver and AI as an actor. Friar traces a path from models that handle seconds-long tasks to reasoning models and agents that act for people over hours or days. She is optimistic, and she frames the future as one of opportunity rather than fear. The conversation also stresses human skills: problem-solving, strategy, kindness and networking.
Friar says an investor-relations custom GPT answers diligence questions in seconds that took analysts hours or a day. ChatGPT also helps the controller unify data and code invoices, which shortens the financial close.
Friar says GPT-3 handled roughly a 5-second task and GPT-4 a 5-minute task. The o1 reasoning models are starting to take on complex work that may run for hours or even days.
Friar says analysts who once had to ask the technical team for help can now use ChatGPT to write Python or SQL. That moves finance beyond number crunching toward being a business partner.
Friar describes agentic AI as technology that can take actions and make decisions for you, such as ordering dinner or running a bank credit process. She sees a further step where AI contributes new knowledge, such as curing diseases.
She cites Nextdoor's kindness reminders, marketing help for small businesses and Minnesota's use of ChatGPT to translate for immigrants. Her argument is that trust, economic health and personalized government support democratic life.
Sarah Friar describes it as AI that can take actions in the world and make decisions for you, not just answer questions. Her example is an AI that orders dinner so it is waiting on the kitchen counter when she gets home.
Friar says the controller uses ChatGPT to unify data and code accounts-payable invoices, which shortens the close. The team also built an investor-relations custom GPT that answers diligence questions in seconds instead of hours.
She hopes finance becomes the home for business insights that help the company grow bigger and faster, rather than an account-keeper of history. Routine, backward-looking work would be done for the team by AI.
She names Morgan Stanley, which organizes its research knowledge and summarizes wealth-management meetings, and Klarna, which built a shopping assistant on OpenAI's API. She also names Mercado Libre, whose CTO said it uses ChatGPT to manage customer-service decisions.
Friar says a CFO could ask a reasoning model in natural language what would happen if no one walked into the store for six months. Today a CFO has to ask the team to model revenue falling by 10, 20, 30 or 40 percent.
Stated by the speakers. Each quote matches the transcript, which shows what was said, not that it is true.
Sean Brown introduces Sarah Friar as a former leader at Salesforce, Square and Nextdoor who is now OpenAI's CFO.
“Sarah has held leadership roles at Salesforce, Square and Nextdoor, and she's now at the forefront of using generative AI to shape the finance function of the future.”
Sarah Friar says GPT-3 could handle roughly a 5-second task and GPT-4 roughly a 5-minute task.
“GPT three could handle maybe a 5 s task, GPT four could probably handle a 5 min task.”
Sarah Friar says OpenAI's o1 model is starting to tackle really complex tasks that can run for hours or days.
“And with O1, now we're starting to be on the cusp of tackling really complex tasks.”
Sarah Friar says OpenAI's controller uses ChatGPT to unify data and code accounts-payable invoices, which shortens the financial close.
“Using things like ChatGPT to unify data from different sources, she's using it to code AP invoices, so it shortens our close, actually, which is something all controllers think about.”
Sarah Friar says OpenAI's finance team held a hackathon within her first couple of weeks at the company to find tasks AI could speed up.
“we did a hackathon within the 1st couple of weeks of me being here.”
Sarah Friar says OpenAI built an investor-relations custom GPT fed with past diligence answers and its management presentation, and told it not to use outside sources.
“We took the time to tell it, don't go external for answers, because there's a lot of fake news written about the company.”
Sarah Friar says she had done over 81 one-on-one meetings in her first three months at OpenAI.
“I think I've done over 81 on ones now in my 1st kind of three months here.”
Sarah Friar says Nextdoor, while she was CEO, was among the first companies to use OpenAI's API to rephrase potentially hurtful remarks.
“we were one of the 1st companies when I was CEO of Nextdoor to take the API actually from OpenAI and use it to help rephrase remarks that could be perceived as hurtful.”
Sarah Friar says Minnesota uses ChatGPT to translate for non-English-speaking immigrants, saving hours of staff time and hundreds of thousands of dollars monthly.
“And in cutting down all that translation, they're literally saving hours of people's time, hundreds of thousands of dollars of cost monthly.”
Sarah Friar says Morgan Stanley uses OpenAI technology in wealth management to summarize video meetings and draft follow-up emails.
“They're using it in wealth management to summarize video meetings and really generate draft follow up emails, and suddenly all of that becomes automated.”
Sarah Friar says Klarna built a digital shopping assistant on OpenAI's API that helps customers find products at the best prices.
“Clarna has been really well documented in the press because they've been very loud and proud about how their new digital shopping assistant built on our API is helping customers find the right products at the best prices.”
Sarah Friar says Mercado Libre's CTO told an OpenAI event that the company uses ChatGPT to autonomously manage customer-service decisions.
“Mercado Libre was actually at our event last week, so I got to actually hear their CTO say to the whole crowd how they're using ChatGPT to autonomously manage customer service decisions.”
Sarah Friar says OpenAI launched new reasoning models called o1 preview and o1 mini.
“we have launched a new set of models with reasoning capabilities, so o1 preview, o1 mini”
Sarah Friar says the idea for what became Ladies Who Launch began with an International Women's Day event for Square sellers soon after she joined Square.
“when I 1st joined Square for International Women's Day, we wanted to do something a little special.”
Sarah Friar says Jack Dorsey was the keynote speaker at the first Square event for women and non-binary sellers.
“Jack Dorsey is going to be our keynote, everyone wants to talk to Jack.”
Sarah Friar says Jo Malone, who spoke at a Ladies Who Launch event in London, lost her sense of smell for about a year and a half during chemotherapy.
“she actually had cancer and in getting chemo, her sense of smell went away for about a year and a half.”
Sarah Friar says ChatGPT told her, when she asked what she might not know about herself, that growing up in Northern Ireland still shapes her.
“how much growing up in Northern Ireland still continues to shape the person you are today.”
Sarah Friar says she took a year out before university to work at an accounting firm, where she manually checked accounts-payable invoices.
“I actually took a year out before university and worked for an accounting firm.”
Sarah Friar says she rowed at university and always sat in the seven seat of the eight-person boat.
“I was always the 7 seat, and the the 7 seat has a really interesting place in the boat.”
Friar charts how much longer a task AI can handle and shows how that already changes the controller's work. It sets up the episode's main claim about finance.
“GPT three could handle maybe a 5 s task, GPT four could probably handle”
A concrete example shows how a custom model trained on past answers cut diligence turnaround dramatically during a financing round.
“allows us to answer questions in seconds that were taking analysts hours”
Friar describes the finance function she hopes for in five years and contrasts it with manual, paper-based checking.
“moved completely to be the home for business insights”
Friar explains the Stanford essay's argument, from Nextdoor's kindness prompts to Minnesota's translation use, that AI can strengthen communities.
“just popping up a kindness reminder and rewriting it with Gen AI”
Real customer examples show where AI is already cutting costs and changing operations in banking, retail and e-commerce.
“Morgan Stanley is a great example of a platform that's organizing”
Friar explains how reasoning models enable agents that act for people, and where she thinks the technology goes next.
“Now you're actually going to be able to take actions even in the world”
Friar imagines CFOs questioning a model directly instead of waiting for the team to build spreadsheets.
“what would happen if no one walked into my store for six months”
Friar recounts the Square event that led to the nonprofit and what women and non-binary founders gained from it.
“creating density so they could find each other”
Friar gives practical advice for aspiring founders, including asking for introductions before offering anything in return.
“I ask something from you 1st, you're actually way more invested in my success”
From McKinsey and Company, I'm Sean Brown and welcome to Inside the Strategy Room. Today, we're pleased to share something a little different with you. It's a bonus episode from our At the Edge podcast, featuring an interview with Sarah Friar, the CFO at OpenAI. Sarah has held leadership roles at Salesforce, Square and Nextdoor, and she's now at the forefront of using generative AI to shape the finance function of the future. Sarah sat down with our senior partner Lareina Yee, who is the chair of the McKinsey Technology Council and based in our Bay Area office.
To discuss the positive potential of gen AI to change work, society and democracy, how Sarah is transforming the finance function at OpenAI and the power of women founders. We hope you enjoy the episode. If you'd like to hear more conversations with creative leaders and tech pioneers, be sure to check out the At the Edge podcast, which we've linked to in the show notes. And now, here's Lorena and Sarah.
What is agentic AI? We asked Sarah Friar, the CEO of OpenAI, to break it down for us.
With agentic technologies, the AI can take actions even in the world and make some decisions for you. From something as simple as just order something for dinner tonight that my family might eat. Like, you don't even need to ask me. I want to go home. I want it to be sitting on the kitchen counter.
Sarah is here to talk about the new possibilities we have in front of us, how you transform functions like finance and leadership in the age of AI. She brings a wealth of experience, having had leadership positions at Nextdoor, Square and Salesforce. This is at the Edge, a production of McKinsey's Technology Council, and I'm Lareina Yee. I am so excited to have you here today, Sarah.
Thank you for having me. It's always a pleasure.
You have been in leadership roles at companies from Salesforce to Square to Nextdoor and now OpenAI. How are you thinking about building the finance team of the future?
So talking about just scale and speed and AI as a tool, it's really fun to get to work at a company where you are building the platform of the future. Where you have a tool in your hand that can do increasingly complex tasks, that's empowering people to work more efficiently and creatively. So, you know, if you just do a little bit of a look back, right? GPT three could handle maybe a 5 s task, GPT four could probably handle a 5 min task.
And with O1, now we're starting to be on the cusp of tackling really complex tasks. Like you're setting something off that might not respond to you for 5 h, maybe even days, because it's actually doing something incredibly complicated. But let me talk about what that actually means in real life right now in our finance function. So we have an amazing controller and she is off to the races. Using things like ChatGPT to unify data from different sources, she's using it to code AP invoices, so it shortens our close, actually, which is something all controllers think about.
But beyond that, we did a hackathon within the 1st couple of weeks of me being here. And what we found was that we were able to look for effectively tasks that are either repetitive, places where there was a lot of data that needed to be found and crunched through, and using it to really kind of speed the team up. Investor relations is another really good example. As you know, I just finished a pretty big financing round.
And in the middle of a deluge of inbound diligence questions, we were feeling underwater. We paused and said, Okay, let's build an investor relations custom GPT. We fed it the knowledge of all of the diligence questions we had answered up to that point, we fed it our management presentation. We took the time to tell it, don't go external for answers, because there's a lot of fake news written about the company. And now we have investor relations GPT that actually allows us to answer questions in seconds that were taking analysts hours, sometimes maybe a whole day to get through a diligence set.
And so things like that have just changed my life. And maybe just the final piece I would say is it's expanding the skill set of the team. Like often in finance, you don't think about having folks who can write code, but it's actually very useful to have someone who can assist, who can write in Python, or maybe a data analyst that needs help with SQL. Before they would have had to go ask the technical organization for some help.
Now we can actually ask ChatGPT to assist in writing that SQL query or whatever. So it's really moved our team away from just beyond number crunching, into just being a better business partner.
Five years from now, give us a preview of what the new finance function might be. What are gonna be some of the new norms or things that you hope you'll be able to do?
I really hope that we have moved completely to be the home for business insights. And how do we drive the business to go bigger and faster? And much less, the, you know, account keepers of history. Today, there's still so much in the finance department that is the look back, not the look forward. You went from doing stuff on a calculator, like, I'm so ancient that I actually took a year out before university and worked for an accounting firm.
And we were ticking and tying in yellow sheets with pencils. And you went off and you looked in a drawer and you find the AP invoice and you brought it back and you compared it. And you're like, okay. I've now done enough random checks that I feel good that this AP balance is correct. That's crazy. No one in their right mind does that anymore. And so I hope we kind of look back on a lot of the things we have to do today that are the backward looking pieces to create a chart of accounts.
And instead, I can look to my team and see everyone is in that mode of forward thinking, insight driven work, and a lot of this kind of rote work is just being done for us.
Sarah, you've had so many different roles and leaps, and certainly one that that is striking is that you were recently the CEO of Nextdoor. And you've gone from being the CFOCOOCEO back to the CFO, and I think it's a leap forward. Tell me a little bit about how you've made some of these decisions.
Number one, if you are ever being mentored by me or you come and ask me a question about titles, I will always tell you to forget about titles. In the end, you know, do your best work. Get yourself into the places in a company where your skill set and the ability to have impact that matters are really overlaid, and do not get caught up in titles. So get to where you can be the most potent in terms of having impact.
I think the reason that I made the shift to OpenAI is an easy one, right? You're literally in the crucible of the transformation of AI, right? It was, it was not a hard decision. It's the 1st time in a long time. I feel like my kids were, like, kind of impressed and interested in what I was doing. Because everybody's talking about what's happening. And to be able to get under the covers and actually see ahead of the world where research is taking us, for example, is such a privilege to sit around that table.
I think the other thing that was important to me, beyond just the skills of being a business leader, is just also being, hopefully, a leader in a human sense. That. I think it's important that we have diversity around these tables as we build technologies that are literally world changing. I'll go back to the CFO role, though it's still probably one of my most favorite jobs because CFOing is about driving strategy, it's about empowering people. When I'm doing my one on ones here at OpenAI, as I get to know people, I think I've done over 81 on ones now in my 1st kind of three months here.
I always ask the question like, the most important thing for me to leave this meeting with is what can I do to accelerate you? And being the person that's figuring out how to say yes,
I think there are a whole bunch of messages going across now of CEOs and business leaders saying, Hey, I just heard you should be the office of yes. There are certain sets of capabilities that you've acquired over time that allow you to be at the center of driving substantial change. Tell us a little bit about some of those capabilities that, in an AI context, I would say, are timeless, irrespective of the shifts in technology.
1st and foremost, about how to break down problems, how to solution problems, and then how to communicate. So 1st of all, I'd say that is being a really important set of skills. I think the 2nd is being strategic, like a lot of people, I think don't even really define strategy well, like their tactics become their strategy, as opposed to having a strategy that they put tactics alongside. And I think that has always helped me, in whatever role I'm in, help really drive a business.
And then I'd say the final piece is this. Um, a skill of, you know, where kind of community meets kindness, meets humanity of not losing who I am myself, right? You know, I? I actually did this prompt to ChatGPT the other night, cause I was with someone who was like, put this in, put this in, and it was like, based on what you know about me, ChatGPT, what's the thing I might not know most about myself?
Right? What an interesting prompt. And the answer it came back with is how much growing up in Northern Ireland still continues to shape the person you are today. I was like, Wow, I feel like I just went to a therapist, but I love that answer because it brought back, you know, reminded me that it is really important culturally where I grew up. It's really important to me how my parents acted in their community, how the investment in their community does this full circle.
Today, where as an older generation, a lot of people still check on them, they feel really supported by it. And so I think about what's the community I'm building? Maybe it's my community in my company, might be the community of my ecosystem. Or, importantly, how we open AI show up in the world where we become synonymous for AI. How do we build a community where it's a world of possibilities and and opportunities, rather than something that can be more fear driven?
And Sarah, this concept of community and kindness. So you recently published an essay in the Digitalist Papers from the Stanford Economy Lab, where you talked about how technology can amplify and actually increase kindness and community connection. Which I think, for a lot of people, is a counterintuitive thought. Can you tell us a little bit about that thinking?
So we went after that essay, uh, because the whole series, the Digital Economy Lab series, was around democracy in particular. And Laura, my co author, and I felt really strongly that if you think about what creates a healthy democracy at a grassroots level, it's this idea that community connectedness is that bedrock, right? When people are connected, they have trust, then they are able to embrace the idea that they live in a democratic society, right? There's a fairness to how things are done.
And so what we looked at, it kind of started actually with our work more at Nextdoor around number one. When you're trying to build community and trust, communication is everything. So by being able to reduce miscommunication, AI can really step in there as a technology. And we were one of the 1st companies when I was CEO of Nextdoor to take the API actually from OpenAI and use it to help rephrase remarks that could be perceived as hurtful.
So if you're typing fast and you're a bit angry about something in your neighborhood, there's a way to constructively say that, but there also can be a very hurtful way to say it. And so just popping up a kindness reminder and rewriting it with Gen AI, that was like ahead of its time. We were almost the 1st to do that. 2nd thing we said is, you know, there's a business element to every community. What makes a strong neighborhood?
It's not just neighbors, it's the whole ecosystem, it's the schools, the churches, the sports teams, but definitely the businesses. And what I've seen throughout my career, got a total soft spot for small businesses, particularly women and non binary owned and started small businesses. They are, you know, that that business owner, that founder, is the CEO, the GC, the the CMO, the CFO, she is everything in her business. But marketing tends to be one of the places that really can make or break that business.
So this was a place where we felt AI could actually bolster a business by helping with basic things like marketing, a marketing plan and so on. And in doing that, you bring economic stimulus to a community. When communities are healthy and wealthy, then things like democracy actually tend to flourish more. And then I think the final piece, which is probably the most pertinent in a way, is thinking about government, like, how can government use AI for better personalization?
Much more one on one to their constituents, right? That's the dream of government is that I'm not a, you know, a basket of people, right? We talk today about voting blocks, as if, like, this homogenous big group of society all does the same thing. They don't. I'm Sarah, you're Lorena, right? We have different needs and wants and so on. But usually it's cost prohibitive for a government to treat us as individuals in a way. But with the rollout of technology using large language models and things like ChatGPT, suddenly you can have incredible personalization.
For example, the state of Minnesota uses ChatGPT today to create increased accessibility to the government. They are doing that by effectively translating for immigrants who might speak non English language. And in cutting down all that translation, they're literally saving hours of people's time, hundreds of thousands of dollars of cost monthly. But they're creating a one to one experience. Where if I am that refugee or that immigrant that needs help to get on my feet and often to create the business, they're now able to do that in a much more personalized way.
So those are kind of really tactical examples of what was the overarching theme that we actually felt that AI could improve the bedrock for democracy.
Sarah, let's, uh, you've mentioned the technology several times, so I can't resist. Let's dive into the actual innovation to open AI, you know, roughly, if I oversimplify, you create products for the enterprise, the business community, developers and consumers. And so, like, maybe we just go in that order and we start with businesses. How do you see generative AI reshaping business of the future? And maybe it's only a year away, maybe it's three years away, but give a give us a lens of how the technology will reshape business.
I just spent last week in New York with customers. Morgan Stanley is a great example of a platform that's organizing that huge knowledge base that they have, particularly in areas like research and using it to automate operations. So that allows them to do a better job in how they get information out to clients. They're using it in wealth management to summarize video meetings and really generate draft follow up emails, and suddenly all of that becomes automated.
So their wealth managers can actually think about me as a client, rather than the the work they need to do in order to send me the follow up email. Clarna has been really well documented in the press because they've been very loud and proud about how their new digital shopping assistant built on our API is helping customers find the right products at the best prices. And also how much they're saving in terms of customer service. And then Mercado Libre was actually at our event last week, so I got to actually hear their CTO say to the whole crowd how they're using ChatGPT to autonomously manage customer service decisions.
And that involves about 450 million annually on our platform. So that's a lot of money that is being touched by our technology, which means both cost saving. But ultimately, I think of it as one of my favorite mission statements at Square was the customer service team had turned questions into commerce. So how do you use an inbound from a customer where maybe they have something to get fixed to actually provide them with added value, which helps their business thrive, but then also brings more revenue back to your company?
And I think the more we think about customer service as that moment where you're going to help the customer do even more, it's a win win. So for businesses, I think it's already happening.
So there's also quite a lot of work if I look at the developer and consumer segments. OpenAI launched new reasoning capabilities. Can you tell us about the reasoning capabilities that are starting to be something that we can touch and feel? As well as I think everyone I've talked to is like, Hey, tell me about agents. Agentic AI help us understand these two really big ideas.
Yeah, I think the word agentic is gonna have to be the Merriam-Webster word of the year or something. And I kind of
Well, last year it was hallucinate, so you guys have made progress by getting rid of hallucination rates down to, like, very low. So at least that's not gonna be the word this year.
let's go to agentic. So, yes, we have launched a new set of models with reasoning capabilities, so o1 preview, o1 mini, and really take a moment just to, you know, this is how we kind of characterize this path ultimately towards AGI, which, of course, is our mission, AGI that benefits humanity, agents or agentic technologies. Think about this as now, because the model can reason in places where historically we would've tried to code and software, but probably reached dead ends.
That made for too many exceptions. Now you're actually going to be able to take actions even in the world, like the the model may get access to your applications so it can make some decisions for you. From something as simple as, like, just order something for dinner tonight that my family might eat. Like, you don't even need to ask me. I want to go home. I want it to be sitting on the kitchen counter. Through to maybe it'sa credit process at a bank, right?
But something that has kind of long duration to it. But goes from a customer having a need to money in their bank account that they're now spending to grow their business. The really exciting next lift after that will be agentic innovation, and this is where you're contributing to new knowledge in the world. And when you hear folks like Sam, other folks at OpenAI, talk about, you know, this moment where we are doing things like cure diseases that have never been able to be tackled before, or where we're helping solve climate change problems, right?
This is this moment where innovation is happening, and we're on that continuum. We're not there yet, but we're definitely on that continuum. I'm super excited where we're going from here.
Sarah, does that mean the team unit changes in in our kind of work and lives? If your your hardest working AI associate is taking a break, thinking through it, you come back, you're having a conversation, you're seeing how they think, how you think. How does that look in the kind of team room?
It is going to be fascinating to think about how the world of work changes. There is a world, particularly when you add in the multimodal piece. So if you think about advanced speech, for example, where today we've kind of rewired ourselves to talk with our thumbs. Certainly, my teenagers are experts in talking with their thumbs. To the point where my son will like, text me things when he's in the same room, which drives me nuts. And now you're moving back into a world with multimodal, where interacting with technology feels, I hate to say it this way, but it feels more human, actually.
I think it can be phenomenal for, you know, things like older generations. My mom has really bad macular degeneration, so she cannot type with her thumbs, nor can she read most things coming in on a small screen phone. But if she could interact with technology verbally, that's just a way more natural way for her to be able to use it.
So the idea of, you know, your mom being able to use technology where she's not being able to use her thumbs, but also imagine that it could extend how you work. I think it also changes the fact that you can have AI agents as part of your team. Like our relationship to machines, just like our relationship to our phone devices, is different.
It's totally true. Like, if you I I think about myself, like you're heading out to work in the morning, I don't know you for the 1st time, you know? If you go back a year and a half, two years ago, when we all started to worry about inflation or Covid hit, right? There's some extraordinary thing has just happened. And as a CFO, what's the 1st thing you do? You call your team and you're like, we need a scenario plan, like, really fast.
Like, what if I can just pair reasoning to my model and then I can talk to it in a natural way? Like, Hey, you know, GPT model, what would happen if no one walked into my store for six months? How would my company survive? Like those, that's the way a human thinks about it. But then we have to go to our team and say, okay, now can you scenario? Test my revenue going down 10, 20, 30, 40?
Like, I can see the spreadsheet forming in my brain as a good CFO. But in reality, being able to just interrogate a model with a natural language overlay, I think is going to be incredibly powerful for CFOs everywhere.
What you actually want is your people not doing the scenario planning, which a machine could do. And so how do you kind of rethink the boundaries of surplus? I mean, we could go on and on. You are the co-founder of Ladies Who launch, which, if people don't know, this is a nonprofit that empowers women and non binary small business owners by providing really practical things like grants, mentorship, networking opportunities. Let's hear a little bit about this, Sarah.
What inspired you in 2019 to be a founder of this organization? And tell me a little bit about what you've learned along the way.
Absolutely, so, actually, it goes back well beyond 2019. So when I 1st joined Square for International Women's Day, we wanted to do something a little special. And we decided we would just invite some of the sellers into our four walls, frankly, and have an evening with them. And that kind of got us into that very 1st event that we did. And I, I remember it so clearly, cause I was not in the slightest worried about people coming to this event.
Cause I was like, we have the secret sauce. Jack Dorsey is going to be our keynote, everyone wants to talk to Jack. This is perfect. And what I realized that evening is, while Jack was awesome. What the women and non binary individuals who were there really benefited from was number one, just finding each other. Like, when you're in a minority, you recognize how hard it is to walk into a room and see no one like you.
When you're in the majority, you just don't even notice. So just 1st of all, creating density so they could find each other. I think the 2nd thing we realized that was kind of the community building was the education. Yeah, it was great to hear from someone, you know, who's built massive businesses. But actually, they wanted practical tips and tricks from people who were in their shoes, doing the thing. And so it was much more when we had small business owners up on stage.
Talking about how they had dealt with creating a social media marketing campaign, or dealt with building a business plan, or getting that 1st finance. You know, whether it was going to a bank and getting a loan, going to the SBA and getting a loan, or even maybe getting some equity funding, like, how did they do that? Like that educational element, totally wild people. And then the 3rd piece was the inspo. But it was really when when women talk, they tend to actually often talk about, like, their failure moments with, like, a real humility and a an authenticity.
That's like, really visceral. And I think it's in that moment when people kind of say, oh, like, if, like, Jo Malone came to one of our events in London. Like, if you've ever smelt a Jo Malone candle or walked through the airport, you know how amazing, like, her scents are. So, but you may not know that she actually had cancer and in getting chemo, her sense of smell went away for about a year and a half.
So for someone whose entire livelihood and sense of self was literally their sense of smell. And for that to disappear and for her to talk about it publicly was just one of those moments. I remember women afterwards were like, Good, gracious, if she can do that, I can do anything. And so I think that inspo was like the other thing we found.
It's amazing for a budding engineer, a woman who's maybe been in the workforce for 30 years and wants to try something new, or maybe someone you know straight out of school who's saying, I've got an idea. What would be one or two pieces of advice that you would give them?
Number one, go for it, like, don't be held back. It's you're always learning and you're probably gonna fail, but don't let that hold you back, so absolutely go for it. I think the 2nd thing I would say is like, network like crazy. It's a great way to learn, it's a great way to make something happen. Like every time you meet with someone, always end by asking, like, who are two other people you would introduce me to, right?
So think about the force multiplication of your network and understand that there may not be something in that moment. But what I've found in life is there's this serendipity where it might be a year later, two years later, three years later, where I'm like, I remember, oh, that person that I met. Women often suffer from believing they have to do something for you 1st, then ask something from you. And actually, the research shows that if I ask something from you 1st, you're actually way more invested in my success.
So network like crazy and then make the ask. Like, how are you gonna get things done?
And people listening may want to actually know more about you, so I'm gonna actually close with rapid fire fun questions. Okay, 1st question You are great at prioritizing exercise and sleep. I don't know how you do that, but apparently you do. Are you a night owl or a morning person?
Oh, I'm a morning person. It is when I have most clarity, most energy. I love nothing better than to be out on a walk when the dawn is coming up. I feel like it's gonna have all my best thoughts.
2nd question You were a rower at University. What do you miss about that?
Ah, I miss being that fit. I miss the kind of discipline and teamwork that comes in a rowing team. I think in a boat like you can't compete with the other rowers in that boat. Instead, you're very much there to complete the whole eight, but in particular, your pair in that eight. So rowers will all know what I'm talking about. And so if your pair is slightly tipped down, you need to tip the other way to kind of balance the boat.
I was always the 7 seat, and the the 7 seat has a really interesting place in the boat. Because the eight, the stroke, sets the pace, but the seven takes the stroke's beat and then translates it for the rest of the boat. And there's a huge confidence in the 7 seat that, like, no matter what this crazy person in front is about to do, the 7 seat kind of is mentally sending the message down the boat.
Don't worry, we got this. We are going to be able to keep up. And I still love that feeling to this day. I get it a lot at work, but I really miss just knowing I'm gonna get in a boat. That feeling's just gonna manifest.
You know, Sarah, it's been an amazing talk, but I think that last piece of seeing you as the person who completes, I think that is really such an encapsulation of your leadership that you complete the boat. With that, Sarah, thank you so much for joining us.
Thank you, Lorena.
Thank you to all of our listeners for joining us today. We really hope you enjoyed Sarah and Lorena's conversation. And, as I mentioned earlier, if you'd like to hear more conversations with creative leaders and tech pioneers, be sure to check out the link to the At the Edge podcast that we've included in the show notes. Today. We've also included a link to a transcript of the interview, available on mckinsey.com. As always, we welcome your feedback and ideas for future Inside the Strategy Room episodes.
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