OpenAI's CFO Presents the Future of Finance with University of California’s Chief Investment Officer

TL;DR: OpenAI CFO Sarah Frier and University of California CIO Jugde Singh Bacher discussed how AI is reshaping financial work, emphasizing the critical roles of curiosity, adaptability, and kindness. They also shared personal career journeys and practical advice for overcoming tech-related fears. ## A Winding Path from Engineering to Finance Growing up in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, Sarah Frier's childhood experience of dismantling vacuum cleaners initially led her to want to become an engineer. She majored in materials science in college, but to pay tuition she took an internship at Arthur Andersen in accounting, accidentally entering the finance world. After graduation, despite having an engineering master's degree, she joined McKinsey and was sent to South Africa for mining consulting—her thesis happened to involve extracting gold from sulfide ores. At McKinsey, she gained a perspective on "how businesses truly operate." She was then sent to the West Coast for business school (Stanford, she joked, was the rival of her alma mater Berkeley), followed by Goldman Sachs, where she learned banking and equity research. She originally thought her next step would be to become a CFO, but a headhunter, over lunch, bluntly told her: "You have absolutely no qualifications to be a CFO, and you don’t even know what a CFO does." That moment of direct feedback became a pivotal turning point. The headhunter advised her to first work for a great CFO, so she joined Salesforce and learned from Graham Smith. She later served as CFO at Square, CEO at Next Door, and eventually became CFO of OpenAI. She summarized: "Careers are long and full of twists—never a straight line. The key is to discover what you’re good at, what brings you joy, and what pays the bills, and then combine them." ## Three Key Words for the Younger Generation Facing career anxiety in the age of AI, Sarah offered three core pieces of advice to her college-age children (and online students): ### Curiosity "Dive in, try new things, and don’t be afraid. Fear often stems from not understanding." She gave a personal example: at OpenAI, the team launches new features weekly. She once felt fear about the agent platform Codex because she didn’t understand it, and tried downloading it but failed. Her assistant told her: "Did you tell it to self-heal?" She typed "Please fix yourself," and it worked. "That’s a huge shift—now you can ask technology to help you use technology, like it telling you where that last screw goes." She recalled that as a child, getting the Encyclopedia Britannica was a gift; today students have far richer knowledge resources and should leverage them. ### Adaptability "Trying to give career advice to kids is almost impossible because AI is changing everything. Just as my parents couldn’t imagine my job, and my grandmother who worked on a farm definitely couldn’t envision what I do today." She cited the conclusion from OpenAI’s economics research team: some jobs will be replaced by AI agents (especially routine, repetitive ones), many will change (her own job has already transformed completely), and even more jobs have yet to be created. Hence adaptability is crucial. ### Kindness "Whatever you do, learn to be kind and compassionate. Much of what makes us human comes back to you in multiples. Help others first, without expecting anything in return. As a student entering the workforce, don’t underestimate the power of doing one good deed for someone—it will repay you many times over." ## How to Overcome Fear of AI Sarah shared a mental reframing technique: when fear strikes, the adrenaline rush you feel is actually the same feeling as being alive. Her brother, an ER doctor, once told her: "If things get really bad, they’ll eventually give you adrenaline to restart your system." So she reframes fear as an "adrenaline moment" and uses that energy to do something positive. For example, before public speaking, she thinks: "There aren’t many women on tech stages; I’ll go up with fear because 'you can’t be what you can’t see.'" By shifting attention from herself to a greater good (like increasing diversity), she harnesses the fear. ## Practical AI Applications in Finance Inside OpenAI, the finance team drove AI adoption from scratch. Sarah mentioned several concrete practices: - **Using ChatGPT and custom GPTs**: Starting with simple tools, then gradually embedding them into workflows. - **Quarterly hackathons**: Dedicating time for the team to "slow down" and learn new tools. She observed that people often say "I don’t have time to learn," but that’s precisely a signal that "they need to take a breath, slow down, and then accelerate." - **Custom GPT for fundraising**: In a large fundraising round, they loaded all materials into ChatGPT to create a GPT that assisted investor relations, significantly improving efficiency. She emphasized that the finance industry is "pushing itself every day, starting with finance to become the company of the future." The core is not replacing people, but unleashing productivity so professionals can focus on higher-value decisions. ## Source Video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76ABuBGX4IY