'That's The Reality - Women Are Forced To Work Harder'

Tara Cobham speaks to Sarah Friar, Nextdoor’s CEO, about app development and navigating sexism in Sillicon Valley

- Tara Cobham

From bigotry and rudeness to endlessly polarised arguments that leave everyone involved angry, social media can be a pretty unpleasant place sometimes. But local networking app Nextdoor aims to change all that, and is going so far as using AI to encourage users to be “kinder” in their conversations with their neighbours, both real and virtual.

As one of the few female CEOs in Silicon Valley, Sarah Friar has faced her own challenges in overcoming prejudice to rise to the top. Now living and working in San Francisco, the County Tyrone native says her journey has not been easy, having frequently found herself in rooms with few if any other women.

She is talking about the reality “no one wants to hear” – that “you do have to work harder as a woman” in the tech and business worlds. According to Harvard University’s Gender Diversity in the Silicon Valley report, less than 5 per cent of the top 150 public tech companies in Silicon Valley have women as CEOs.

Friar describes how her journey to becoming CEO of a community-based company is rooted in her childhood experiences, as her mum and dad “were Nextdoor before the internet”.