The connection between Silicon Valley and the village of Sion Mills in Co Tyrone may not exactly be a natural one, but one female business titan has been creating and developing it for years now.
Sarah Friar is the CEO of Nextdoor, the neighbourhood community app which has implanted itself in communities all over the world.
Having spent time working for financial institutions such as Goldman Sachs and payment platform Square, Sarah took over as the head of Nextdoor in 2018.
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Now based in California, Sarah told Belfast Live that the sense of community she gained from growing up in a border area during the Troubles is one of the pillars on which her career was built.
“There was this deep sense of community that we all support each other and we all lift each other up, in a very dire time,” Sarah said.
“Growing up in the 70s and 80s on the border, there was always bombscares and bombs happening. And the area was very, very poor, so the community really lifted you at those times.
“My mum was a district nurse and my dad was a personnel manager at the local mill, so they were very big people people.
“At our backdoor in the evenings there would often be a knock, and it would either be someone needing my mum, or someone looking for my dad asking for a job. So they were known as the local community councillors.
“I try to come home at least twice a year, my parents are getting a little older and it’s just home.
“I still love it after all these years, I appreciate it more because I’m not Sarah Friar, CEO of Nextdoor. I’m just me and I really appreciate the values of people in those communities.”
Sarah left Sion Mills for Oxford in her early 20s, adding that none of her family had ever been to university and were unsure of what it involved.
At that time she didn’t believe Northern Ireland was a place she could flourish, but fast forward to the present day and she says things are very different now. She is now an advocate for women in business in Northern Ireland and has invested in several startups here.
“We were not wealthy, my mum and dad were not going to be able to afford university, and had never even been to university so they didn’t really know what it was about.
“Growing up where we grew up, you were kind of steered into vocational jobs like being a doctor or a lawyer, there wasn’t really a lot of thinking outside the box.
“Coming home was difficult, I missed my family and I missed culturally what Northern Ireland was like but I didn’t feel like Northern Ireland at the time had the job opportunities and the growth prospects I was striving for.
“It’s so different now, there are some great technology companies coming up here now.
“I do think there’s this very strong entrepreneurial gene in Northern Ireland that people don’t get credit for.
“There’s always been a deep vein of having to be entrepreneurial, because there weren’t big companies coming to the North to hire you so you kind of had to build your own business.”
Sarah said Belfast was one of the most engaged communities on the Nextdoor platform from across the UK, and that she hopes to see it grow further into more rural communities, particularly with the help of one of her biggest fans.
More than 60 million people now use the app to connect with others in their neighbourhood.
“I got asked recently what’s the kindest thing that someone has ever done for you, and I told the story of the first bomb in Sion Mills,” she said.
“All of the windows in the back of our house had been shattered, and I remember our neighbours who were Catholic and we were protestant. They came in with plywood and boarded up the windows because it was freezing cold, and bringing in food.
“It goes back to that community - for Nextdoor it might be something smaller than that. It might be someone trying to find their lost dog or their keys.
“It does ladder up to these big things about how neighbours help each other.
“It’s going across the whole of Northern Ireland now, and I’m really excited to see Sion Mills slowly but surely getting on there.
“My dad has been the biggest advocate, he’s out there knocking on doors and asking people to join, which I absolutely adore.”
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