Ariana Berry

Director of Business Operations

Available now for contract, interim and fractional engagements, and for permanent Director of Operations, Business Operations and People Operations roles. Get in touch →

I'm an operations leader with more than 10 years across retail, healthcare and education. Most recently I spent five years at MiaDonna & Company, a Portland direct-to-consumer jewelry retailer (2021–2026), promoted from Office Manager to Director of Operations to Director of Business Operations. I ran payroll across five U.S. states and Canada for a 10–20 person team and oversaw multi-million-dollar budgets across finance, HR, IT, legal/compliance and logistics, as a cross-functional lead rather than by building a department.

Day to day that meant running multi-state payroll and compliance, moving benefits administration through several third-party administrators (TPAs), rewriting the employee handbook, and administering BambooHR, QuickBooks Online, Bill.com, Shopify, DocuSign and the rest of the stack. It also meant managing a ~$200K flagship store relocation and launch.

How I work: I document as I go, automate what repeats, and leave behind systems the next person can run without me. My background as a systems administrator and a certified technical communicator is why my SOPs actually get used.

Since mid-2026 I've also designed and built NeatDrive, a SaaS tool that audits Google Drive sharing and cleans up files. Same instincts: find the mess, fix the system, automate the upkeep.

What I run

1. People Operations

Multi-state payroll processing and compliance (five states plus Canada), benefits administration and TPA selection, employee handbook and policy development, HRIS administration (BambooHR), Paychex.

2. Finance Operations

Multi-million-dollar budgets, cash-flow forecasting, P&L and GAAP reporting, chart of accounts redesign, AP/AR automation, vendor contract audits. QuickBooks Online, Bill.com, Concur, Nexonia.

3. Systems, IT & Logistics

Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 admin, access and security, SaaS consolidation. Shopify, Power BI, Tableau, advanced Excel (macros, data modeling), Asana, Monday.com, Notion, Zapier, Make. Commercial leases, vendor procurement, site buildouts.

Career highlights

Retail · MiaDonna & Company · 2021–2026

Director of Business Operations. $60K in annual recurring savings from vendor contract audits and SaaS consolidation; accounts receivable automation that returned 23 working days a year to staff; benefits moved through several TPA transitions at lower cost; ~$200K flagship store relocation opened on schedule.

Healthcare nonprofit · 2020

Office & Systems Administrator. Moved a ~15–20 person statewide organization from local servers to Microsoft Teams and SharePoint during COVID, ran the RFP for a new IT managed service provider, and wrote a 40-page Remote Work Manual.

Education nonprofit · ISTE · 2018–2022

Events & Office Manager for an annual conference of 12,500–20,000+ participants. Replaced dozens of separate tracking docs with one automated workbook for presenter, volunteer, staff travel and hotel assignments; analyzed 2,000+ post-conference surveys.