Key responsibilities of this role’s support to the COO will include:
- Calendaring, scheduling, and meeting
preparation: The EA will manage Laura’s calendar and develop a deep
understanding of how her time is best spent based on her unique role and
organizational needs. Beyond simply supporting Laura, the EA can
facilitate smoother operations across the organization by proactively
flagging potential conflicts, working deftly around complicated schedules,
and ensuring that the entire team has visibility into Laura’s activities.
They will also help in the preparation for meetings (e.g. by sending bios
of key attendees) as well as documenting next-steps and ensuring follow-up
commitments are completed.
- General administrative support: The EA will
support Laura with a variety of administrative tasks, which could range
from computer troubleshooting to reviewing timesheets, to taking notes
during critical meetings, to conducting online research. Taking these
administrative tasks off Laura’s plate allows her to focus deeply on
managing organizational operations.
- Travel arrangements, procurement, and expense
reporting: Our work often takes Laura all over the globe. The EA will
research and book travel, ensure travel logistics are smooth and that
travel agendas are set up beforehand, and that expense reports are correctly
filed afterward. The EA will also handle Laura’s other purchase requests
and expense reporting as needed.
- Draft communications: The EA may draft emails,
memos, reports, and other needed communications for Laura.
This role will also support Kenya’s culture and office operations:
- Kenya office operations: the EA will support
operational excellence in the Nairobi office. This may include providing
logistical support for team-building activities, ensuring the office is
welcoming to external visitors, liaising with vendors for ongoing office
maintenance and repairs, or other administrative support that ensures all
team members are able to do their best work.
Here’s
what you might have tackled last week –
- Coordinated with Laura to untangle the week
after an essential meeting needed to be rescheduled, sorting out the
cascade of reschedulings impacting several Namati staff. Your familiarity
with the organization, and the needs of each stakeholder, allowed you to
find new meetup times with minimal stress or back-and-forth, ensuring
staff know their time is valued despite the change-up.
- Worked with the Managing Director, Partnerships
to ensure they have prepared and sent an agenda to Laura in advance of
their biweekly check-in.
- Upon learning of an upcoming multi-country trip
the COO is planning, proactively researched how to secure travel visas in
each country, mapped out complex itineraries, and coalesced comprehensive
logistical details for every step of her trip, coordinating closely with
the COO to ensure all needs are met before she departs.
- Tracked down missing receipts from one of the
COO’s previous trips to the United States, and submitted the relevant
expenditure forms to the finance team.
- Vetted external venues for a Namati Kenya team
retreat based on cost, location, and the purposes of the retreat, ensuring
that the three options you present align with budgetary considerations and
the retreat’s purpose.
Must-Haves
- You find true joy in supporting others: You
genuinely enjoy, and have experience with, providing high-quality support
to senior managers and executives. The frustration of spending three hours
troubleshooting a computer issue melts away when you see the crucial work
they were able to move forward as a result of your efforts.
- You’re exceptionally proactive, organized, and
attentive to detail: You are detail-oriented and take pleasure in letting
no ball drop as you deftly juggle multiple projects, all while maintaining
professional composure and confidentiality. As a matter of practice, you
proactively check and double check your work to ensure it’s free of
errors, and you maintain strong systems to keep all the details straight.
- You’re calm and effective under pressure: In
previous jobs you have excelled at a high volume of complex logistical
details, switching gears, and thoughtfully prioritizing at high speeds.
You understand that people have diverse working styles, organization
skills, strengths, and weaknesses, and that a successful partnership with
leaders means meeting them where they are and accommodating their unique
needs rather than expecting them to operate differently.
How to Apply
