Ariana Berry
Business Operations & Strategy
Finance · Payroll, benefits & HR systems · Contracts & compliance · AI-enabled operations
Lake Oswego, Oregon · Remote across the US
Open to full-time, contract and fractional business operations work. Remote across the US, or hybrid in the Portland metro. Get in touch →
For five years I was the person a 10–20 person company handed every function nobody else owned: finance, HR and payroll, IT, legal and compliance, logistics. None of those teams reported to me. The job was to find out what was actually happening in each one, put it next to the numbers, and give the owner and the leadership team a picture they could decide from — then build the process so the decision stuck.
Since mid-2026 I have done the same thing for my own product. I built and run NeatDrive, a tool that shows people who can open their Google Drive files, on my own, with AI agents doing the build and audit work under written protocols and verification gates I designed.
$60K a year in recurring savings from a vendor and SaaS audit · 23 working days a year returned to staff by automating accounts receivable · ~$200K flagship store relocation, opened on schedule through construction delays · 5 states + Canada payroll, run end to end
What I do
Turn context and data into a decision. Benefits renewal: modeled the quoted plans against actual staff elections, put the comparison in front of the owner, and the company changed brokers. Cash flow: redesigned the chart of accounts to GAAP so leadership and lenders saw the same numbers at the same time.
Build the capability that wasn't there. An automated AR workflow where there had been manual entry. A 40-page remote-work manual where there had been institutional memory. One automated workbook where a 20,000-person conference had run on dozens of separate documents.
Work across teams without owning them. Cross-functional lead across five functions at MiaDonna; on-site staff lead for ISTE's national conferences; a documented, auditable solo operation at NeatDrive.
Run operations with AI in the loop. NeatDrive's build, audit and reporting work runs through AI agent workflows (Claude, Claude Code) governed by dispatch protocols, test gates and a failure taxonomy I wrote — so agent output is reliable enough to act on.
Ways to work with me
Full-time. Business operations, finance operations, and payroll and HR systems roles. Remote, or hybrid in the Portland metro.
3–6 month engagements. Contract or fractional, remote or in the Portland area:
Vendor and SaaS cost audits
Setting up automated business systems (Zapier, Make.com, AI agent workflows)
Payroll provider changes or new-state additions
Open enrollment coordination
HRIS implementation and cleanup
Year-end close support
Handbook and policy refresh
Kind words
“When Ariana owned a project, I knew it would be completed on time, done well, and handled with financial discipline.”
— Anna-Mieke Anderson, Founder, MiaDonna & Company
“The scope of her role was remarkable, spanning HR, payroll and benefits, accounting and finance, legal and compliance, systems administration, and supply chain and fulfillment… Ariana excelled across all of them.”
— Andrew Puddifoot, who managed Ariana directly at MiaDonna