Sarah Merion
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I design and build the products, systems, and AI infrastructure that turn ambitious visions into new revenue.

What it's like to work with me.

I'm wired to care deeply about the psyche, motivations, and incentives of the people I work with, and the humans that my work ultimately impacts. I prioritize honest, direct communication, "listen in between the lines" as I call it, and ask the questions that tend to unlock what's really going on.

I thrive when collaborating with kind, ambitious, talented humans. I find that the trust that comes from doing this well is the ultimate currency.

(It probably also helps that I've been told I'm fun to work with. Their words, not mine.)

See my work → Get in touch
Sarah Merion

Hi, I'm Sarah.

I lead product innovation at Pacific Community Ventures, which acquired my firm Radiant Data in 2025. Over the past year I've launched three new AI-native products from 0 to 1, stood up the company's AI-native operating infrastructure, and cultivated a sponsorship partnership with a publicly traded bank from a cold introduction I made 18 months ago.

Across 15 years in tech and consulting, I've built operating models, integrated tech stacks, designed go-to-market plays, and turned executive vision into systems teams actually run on. I co-founded Radiant Data in 2023. Before that, I founded a workplace wellness platform that was acquired by SimplaFYI in 2017, and ran Impact Aligned, advising social impact orgs on technology strategy, data and reporting, and now, AI.

I put people first, consider myself an AI-native, am customer-obsessed, and am unwilling to design strategy and solutions that doesn't address real pain points and translate into real execution.

Finally, I believe in harnessing technology to make the world a better place - that's a core value of mine.

A short little rantMy point of view on AI, currently

Should this be built?

In this wild ride of AI, anything can be built. The constraint isn't possibility anymore. It's discernment.

The answer to "can it" is always yes. The harder, more useful question is whether we're solving a real problem, or just adding to the noise and digital waste of an industry that can ship anything in two days.

I'm problem-obsessed.

I swim upstream to understand market dynamics, go-to-market truth, whether the pain point is real and worth solving. I prioritize stakeholder alignment: lining the right people up and having the real, hard conversations to engage them and pressure test if something will work for all parties involved. That way, when we do decide to build *something wonderful*, we know that we are launching to a well oiled machine and a receptive audience. "Build it and they will come" doesn't work as something you hope for. It works because you've engineered it in advance.

Get the problem right, and the solution is the easy part. That's my edge: the upstream thinking that makes anything I build downstream worth building.

Skills and Capabilities

My expertise ☟

New revenue stream design
Conceive and architect new business opportunities inside existing organizations, from market hypothesis through launch to live revenue. My creative brain thrives here to build net-new revenue streams. I've done this specifically in turning professional services into new, scalable product-based revenue streams.
Founding to acquisition → Service to product →
Operating model design
Design internal operating systems from scratch or optimize what's been built. I'm a systems thinker and love to build the infrastructure that runs the business, and connect the dots between what real people are doing and how to make the data and their days flow better. That includes standing up AI-native CRM layers — Attio-based, integrated across functions, running on AI workflows — for organizations replacing legacy CRMs that no one actually uses.
See the case study in action →
Go-to-market strategy
Positioning, launch sequencing, early customer acquisition. Lining up partners, adjacent stakeholders, and non-traditional channels — and translating strategy into operating reality across engineering, GTM, finance, and program teams so everyone's pulling the same direction. I've done this specifically in turning professional services into new, scalable product-based revenue streams.
See the case study in action →
Strategic partnerships
Skilled at building strategic partnerships from scratch and turning cold introductions → partners → evangelists. Experienced with multi-stakeholder engagement and institutional partnership building. I've got patience to be in it for the long haul and build trust over time.
See the case study in action →
Original research and analysis
Data projects that need a north star and a spokesperson are my sweet spot. I translate market signals and economic insights into narratives that hit hard to influence decision making. I combine data analysis, storytelling, and narrative design with high-impact visuals and interactive data visualizations built in Shorthand and Flourish.
See the case study in action →
AI-native prototyping
Seeing is believing. I move conversations and concepts into working prototypes to pressure test internally, get stakeholder or client buy in, and materially accelerate the path to execution. In addition to prototyping new concepts and products, I accompany them with financial models and go to market strategy for how a strategy can be executed.
See the case study in action →
Tools & tech stack

Some of my favorite tools I reach for daily.

Design, build & AI
Lovable Base44 Cursor Claude Figma GitHub

Custom MCP servers that connect AI to live data and workflows.

Ops & platforms
Attio Stripe Resend Netlify

Built on Supabase and Railway, integrated with the Anthropic API

Automation
Zapier n8n
Workflow
Notion Wispr Flow Loom ScribeHow Typeform VideoAsk

Also Airtable, Monday, and Asana when a team or client is already on them.

Data & storytelling
Flourish Shorthand Tableau
Humanity
Levity Humor Empathy Making the world better with technology
Currently

Open to full-time roles and fractional engagements.

Roles I'm exploring
Strategy · Operations · GTM · Partnerships · AI Architect · Platform
Industries
Tech-forward, fintech, and companies that are scaling to create societal impact with innovation. I'm drawn to companies with a soul, if you know what I mean :)
Location
Based in Boston, willing to travel ✈.
Get in touch →
A portion of my portfolio

Six things I’ve built recently.

In the past 24 months, I've gone from strategist and operator to designing and building my own applications. This has sped up my ability to accelerate partnerships, get things built, and get things done. I still collaborate with technical partners to execute other parts of projects.

01 / Operating Model / CRM Design

An AI-native operating system inside a national investment firm.

The challenge

A national lending and investment firm with big plans needed an operating system that could keep up. When Pacific Community Ventures acquired my firm Radiant Data in 2025, I was retained to design an AI-native operating system the team could run on.

What I built

A CRM platform around Attio, integrated tech stacks across functions, AI-assisted planning frameworks, native data integrations that move the right data to the right people, and a library of workflow automations the team uses daily. An operating-system rewrite mid-flight, balancing scalability, reliability, extensibility, and speed for users at very different levels of tech fluency.

What it unlocked

New revenue streams that didn’t exist before the acquisition, real-time visibility for executive decision-making, and a team that uses AI as a default rather than a novelty.

OPERATING SYSTEM CRM · stacks · workflows
02 / Building from scratch to acquisition

Building Radiant Data.

ImpactAlpha: Pacific Community Ventures acquires Radiant Data to bring equitable AI to mission-based lending →


The challenge

The CDFI industry needed access to machine learning, data analytics, and AI expertise that didn’t yet exist at the right price point or in trusted partnership models. Most professional services in this space were out of reach for community lenders and social-impact funders.

What I built

Radiant Data: co-founded in 2023 to democratize access to ML, data analytics, and AI professional services for the economic equity field. My co-founder and I built the firm from zero based on our industry and tech expertise: brand, positioning, operating model, delivery capability, and the thought leadership that established us as first movers and trusted partners for CDFIs and impact funders on AI and data infrastructure.

What it unlocked

Pacific Community Ventures acquired Radiant Data in 2025 and retained me to lead strategic partnerships and product innovation post-acquisition. I led the integration and the national launch of the Radiant Data Hub within PCV: a virtual town hall and multi-city roadshow through New York, DC, and San Francisco that convened 200+ investors, funders, and ecosystem leaders and generated $700K+ in philanthropic and earned-revenue pipeline. Today, Radiant Data operates as the Radiant Data Hub within PCV, and Anthropic selected to partner with PCV based on what we do at the Radiant Data Hub: providing a shared resource to a network of CDFIs that collects and synthesizes voice-based feedback from small business clients and their workers to improve products and services. Anthropic press release where Radiant Data Hub is mentioned in the last paragraph. →

2023 founded 2025 acquired RADIANT DATA Two years, one exit
03 / Economic Research and Data Storytelling

America Blooms Where We Water Her.

The challenge

Where in the US are entrepreneurs ready and willing to build, but starved for the capital that would let them?

What I built

A methodology that crossed Bureau of Labor Statistics data on business formation with Raj Chetty’s research on economic connectedness, applying FIPS-level mapping to surface US counties where high entrepreneurship met thin access to capital. The output is a research narrative with interactive visualizations.

What it unlocked

The briefing has reached leadership at the US Department of Commerce, US Small Business Administration, World Bank, and The Atlantic Council. The skill that mattered was distilling millions of data points down into a clear, decision-ready picture. Finding the narrow cross-section where two coexisting conditions met, and showing exactly which counties they applied to. View the research story →

U.S. COUNTIES Where entrepreneurship meets thin capital high entrepreneurship + thin access to capital
04 / 0 → 1 product

An AI credit risk product, prototype to production.

The challenge

A national lender wanted to give underwriters better tools and let them responsibly take on more risk. The market hypothesis was clear; the product didn’t exist yet.

What I built

After our team delivered a machine learning credit risk model in the form of a pickle file, our client still didn't know how to integrate it into their underwriter's workflow and actually use the model we built for them. I conceived the of the front end product, prototyped it two days, and validated the user experience with the underwriters and leadership. This front end empowered the underwriters to use the model in their workflow, and unlocked their ability to interact with the data and see the underlying model methodology decisions to supplement their human judgement and expertise, in addition to the model's recommendations. This process also accelerated our team's path to productionize this as well, from quarters into weeks.

What it unlocked

A live AI product now analyzing more than $15M in lending capital across the field, reducing underwriter effort and unlocking responsible risk-taking at the sector level. Seeing-is-believing in action: a working prototype made the strategic vision tangible enough to win executive buy-in. We then commercialized this into a SaaS product for the CDFI industry.

CREDIT RISK · AI PRODUCT From 2-day prototype LENDING CAPITAL ANALYZED $15M+ across the field, and growing. 2-day prototype production
05 / Platform + partnership

A peer benchmarking platform for a community lenders and main street banks.

The challenge

The Community Development Financial Institution sector needed a shared place where peers could benchmark against each other responsibly. Without it, leaders were making capacity, risk, and growth decisions without the comparative visibility that lets a sector advance together.

What I built

A peer benchmarking platform from scratch, with alignment and stakeholder buy-in from main street banks who have a financial incentive to align their philanthropic investments to strategic objectives. I designed the product, the business model, the sponsorship model, and the go-to-market. I cultivated a sponsorship relationship with a publicly traded financial institution from a cold introduction I made 18 months ago. As of this writing, the sponsorship is near close.

What it unlocked

Member organizations get the comparative visibility they need to make sharper calls on risk, growth, and capacity. Sector-level data infrastructure that hadn’t existed before. It also unlocked transparency into deal flow and lending opportunities across the country, in zip codes that need capital the most, but the CDFIs in those local economies may not hae the volume or visibility to institutional funders.

PEER BENCHMARK Risk · Growth · Capacity your org peer 1 peer 2 peer 3 peer 4 peer 5 peer 6
06 / Net new revenue stream: service to product

A new revenue stream from a high-touch professional services offering, built into a subscription product, delivered via Claude using an MCP server.

The challenge

The professional services world has a productization problem: expertise gets trapped in live delivery, and revenue gets capped at the ability to add hours. A respected LinkedIn thought leadership coach with strong enterprise clients and national awards had this problem at scale. Her high-touch service business was working, but it had no path to growth beyond her hours. She needed a way to deliver her framework, coaching, and accountability to a new member base her one-on-one model couldn’t reach.

What I built

A subscription product that turns the coach's methodology, frameworks, proprietary empathy research, and coaching expertise into a scalable system members access through Claude. I designed the net-new revenue stream end to end: the business model, full member lifecycle, and the user experience — then built the technical infrastructure to support it. A custom MCP server hosted on Railway retrieves each member's stored voice profile and injects it into their Claude session, so the AI behaves as a writing coach trained specifically to that person. Stripe drives acquisition and cancellation, Resend handles onboarding, and Supabase stores member voice profiles. The whole pipeline runs without manual intervention.

What it unlocked

A new revenue stream that didn’t require adding hours. The coaching is delivered by the protocol and system prompt I engineered, not through live professional services delivery. The product is in pilot with existing clients testing it. For more and more professional services and coaching orgs that rely on trading hours to dollars, the ability to design and digitize a new revenue stream that is thoughtfully designed with the end client in mind matters. I often love to design these as white glove experiences, and ensure that minimal value is lost in the transition from live delivery to digital delivery.

PRODUCT LINE Service, productized MEMBERS . . . CUSTOM MCP SERVER /coach voice profile CLAUDE coach Supabase Stripe RECURRING REVENUE · NO LIVE HOURS Delivered by the protocol, not the calendar.
Wanna chat?

The best way to reach me is email.

sarahmerion@gmail.com or find me on LinkedIn.