Sharon Daniels

Chairman and CEO

Sharon Daniels is a member of the shareholder group that founded Arria NLG. Sharon has over 25 years’ experience in strategic business development and has consulted to leading global technology and financial service companies. Sharon is also a founder of Diligent Corporation and served on the Diligent board through 2010, where she also held an executive position as Chief Marketing Officer. Prior to joining the Diligent, Sharon was a vice president at the US-based company PaperDirect, Inc. which subsequently sold to Deluxe Corporation.

Barbara Kendall

Non-Executive Director

Barbara Kendall is a five time Olympian and Triple Olympic medalist and, since 2005 she has been an active member of the International Olympic Committee and sits on various international sporting executive boards, commissions or working groups representing New Zealand, Oceania, Woman and Athletes and chairs Association of National Olympic Committees’ Athletes Commission. She co-created and manages the International Olympic Committee’s Athletes Career Program in Oceania. Barbara was appointed the Chef De Mission for the New Zealand Youth Olympic Team that went to Buenos Aries 2018 and is a Vice President of the International Surfing Association since 2014.

Barbara has a degree in Social Services and a Graduate Diploma in Applied Management and consults with different corporate clients on team, culture, leadership and self intelligence. Barbara is a director of a Natural Skin Care Company in NZ which makes natural NZ-made products.

Kiri Borg

Non-Executive Director

Kiri Borg is a founding shareholder of Arria. She has over 40 years of experience in corporate management, operations, sales, and marketing, including at Fortune 500 companies, and has served on both corporate and condominium boards. In the mid-1990s, she cofounded a leading edge internet and technology company which invented and patented Easy Edit, a groundbreaking data-driven database program and the digital SaaS corporate governance “Boardbook” that became Diligent Boardbooks. She served as Diligent’s first company secretary 2007-08 as Diligent listed on the New Zealand Stock Exchange.

Prior to co-founding Diligent, from 1987-1997 Kiri was a Vice President at Tishman Construction Corporation in New York, a subsidiary of Aecom, where, a trailblazer in the traditionally male-dominated industry, she successfully negotiated and managed contracts and complex billion-dollar projects in one of the toughest and most competitive environments in the world.

Kiri has a BA in from Columbia University in New York and a certificate in Construction Management from New York University. She has dual citizenship US and New Zealand.

Geoffrey Bell

Executive Director

Geoff has 20 years of entrepreneurial experience focused on providing enterprises with the ability to compete at scale. Geoff is also the President of Arria NuSutus, the division of Arria that is revolutionizing the Quick Service Restaurant industry with the deployment of Arria Ping AI, the world’s first end-to-end SaaS software solution built on top of Arria’s NLG technologies.

“Arria NLG enables enterprises to instantly and automatically create written and/or spoken outputs from their data, letting people know what they need to know, before they need to know it — not just in tables and visualizations — but in natural language anyone can understand.”

William Deane

Independent Director

Will is a Managing Director of Exto Partners, a technology venture capital firm based in Sydney, Australia he co-founded in 2003. Will is also Managing Director of the B3V Fund focused on investments in blockchain assets and NFTs. Will has founded, invested in or been a director of more than a dozen high growth and global businesses and has successfully managed IPOs, mergers, and acquisitions for Exto’s portfolio companies. Will is currently a Director of RedHill Education (ASX:RDH), Tuned Global, Zetaris, EnVie Fitness, Optalert and WhiteSky Labs. Exto Partners has also invested in Airtasker (ASX:ART), Tribe, Hey You (Beat the Q), Sensear and Ondek.

William is an experienced corporate lawyer, having worked in Australia with Ashursts (formerly Blake Dawson) and in New York with Sidley Austin LLP and Skadden, Arp, Slate, Meagher and Flom LLP. He has advised leading domestic and international corporations on capital raising, stock exchange listing (NYSE, NASDAQ and ASX), mergers and acquisitions and general corporate matters.

William has been admitted to practice law in Victoria, Australia and New York, USA and has an L.L.B. (hons) from Bond University 1995 and a B.A (hons) from the University of Sydney 1992. William is member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.

Sean Drake

Independent Director

Sean Drake is the Founder and Managing Partner of Stony Lonesome Group, a venture capital firm where he serves as the Managing General Partner and Chief Investment Officer of five funds. He is also the Founder & Chairman of Pathfinder Solutions Group, a consulting firm focused on go-to-market strategies, sales, and government capture for Stony Lonesome Group portfolio companies in the Department of Defense/ Government sector. Mr. Drake has over 25 years of experience with start-ups, entrepreneurship, and public markets.

Sean was previously a high-performance coach at the US Olympic Training Center working with USA Cycling and USA Triathlon. He also served as an Infantry Captain in the US Army.

Mr. Drake holds a Bachelor of Science, Engineering Management, United States Military Academy, West Point NY (1990) and a Master of Science, Exercise Science, University of Colorado, Colorado Springs CO (1999).

Thomas Makeig

General Counsel

Thomas has practiced US and international law for over 30 years. He is responsible for integrating and facilitating Arria’s corporate structure, tax efficiency planning, IP development, corporate governance and securities law compliance worldwide. He played a similar key role in Diligent’s IPO.

“Arria’s proven leadership team and well-defined vision have the company poised to do great things.”

David Lloyd

Company Secretary

David Lloyd has extensive global experience as a Chief Financial Officer and Chartered Accountant having worked with businesses in New Zealand, Australia, the US, the Caribbean and the UK. His expertise is in the area of management accounting and business development, specifically focused on using technology to streamline the planning process and improve management reporting and decision-making. Since Arria’s founding in 2012, David has been involved in developing and managing Arria’s planning, budgeting, reporting and governance systems. As Arria moves towards its New York Stock Exchange listing, as Company Secretary David is responsible for carrying out the instructions of the board, assisting in the implementation of corporate strategies, giving practical effect to the board’s decisions and liaising with shareholders and a range of other external parties including share registrars, auditors, lawyers and tax advisers.