Executive Assistant

Executive Assistant / Office Manager

Description of Your Role

As the Executive Assistant / Office Manager, you will be responsible for a full range of administrative and organizational management of office activities to ensure the operational effectiveness and excellence of the business unit. 

Your primary role will be to support the daily duties and activities of the Executive Chairman at Excelsior East Africa Office. 

You will also work in partnership with the rest of our global support network around several types of activities, upholding the highest work ethics including confidentiality, diligence, efficiency, self-motivation, and solid verbal and written communications.

Overall responsibilities include:

Executive Project oversight:

• Acts on the Authority of the Office of the Executive Chairman to oversee strategic projects with a primary focus on initiatives affecting the value chain that typically require cross functional resource allocation. Is entrepreneurial and has discerning ability to recognize salient business issues that “move the needle.”
• Assist the Executive Chairman with his daily schedule and duties, to include managing his calendar, commitments, and travel arrangements (planning itineraries, developing agendas and meeting materials, reporting expenses, etc.) including looking ahead and pro-actively solving conflicts
• Researching, planning, organizing and managing events, meeting and conference call set up – Global
• Placing information on calendars in detail and ensuring that the information is easily available for mobile principals
• Managing preferred vendor agreements and frequent traveler subscriptions – hotels, airlines, car services, credit cards

Administrative Support:

• Coordinate internal and external meetings related to the Chairman’s work as necessary;
• Arranging meetings and conference calls (including coordinating all meeting logistics, developing agendas and meeting materials, etc);
• Recording, transcribing, and distributing notes/minutes of meetings;
• Compose, proofread, edit, and prepare briefings, documents, proposals,
• memos, program summaries, meeting agendas, follow-up reports and other related materials for internal and external distribution; and
• Planning space allocations, layouts, and floor moves as required;
• Maintain electronic and paper files for the Chairman, and perform other clerical duties as needed or requested.
• Answering phone calls and handling queries – typically within one hour
• Reading, monitoring and responding to the principal's email – typically within an hour (or in the first 1 hour when an assistant who is offline returns online)
• Complete various forms including: purchase requests, travel requests, expense reports
• Performing project based research and preparing simple word and power point presentation documents

Self-Management & Emotional Intelligence:

• Leads in creating an emotionally intelligent organization
• Demonstrates a genuine passion for the work, and leverages political forces and tacit knowledge to support the achievement of organizational goals and priorities.
• Demonstrates introvert and extrovert capabilities, unimpeachable integrity and selflessness
• Have emotional intelligence, diplomatic skills and keen judgment and has the ability to give and receive constructive criticism.

Conflict Management/Negotiating & Resolving Disagreements:

• Leveraging conflict in the interests of Excelsior & setting standards. Holds himself/herself and others accountable for respecting organizational standards of civility in all circumstances.

Core Competencies

Ethics & Values: Promoting Ethics and Integrity/Creating Organizational Precedents

Organizational Awareness: Building support and political acumen

Builds and maintains alliances and networks of partners, colleagues and interest groups inside and outside of the organization to achieve results.

Working in Teams: Building and promoting effective teams

Makes self-accessible and participates in corporate activities sharing information associated with them.

Hard Skills:

• Has a multi-facetted lattice work of mental models and case study to draw upon based on knowledge and experience;
• Has sharp project management and organizational skills and sensitivity and orientation to identify systemic issues and Multi-tasking;
• A strategic thinker who is adept at multi-tasking in fast paced environment, able to plan, prioritize, and organize individual and group activities and processes;
• High level of confidentiality, sound judgment and discretion, and a track record demonstrating an ability to make difficult decisions;
• Has Information gathering and analysis skills and a keen mind and multi-focal intelligence;
• Positive attitude and mature judgment with adaptive working style;
• Excellent time management skills; able to prioritize and attend to multiple assignments for self and senior manager(s).

Qualifications for the Role

• Bachelor’s degree
• 4-6 years of experience preferred
• Demonstrated success in staffing multiple senior level managers
• Exceptional organization, interpersonal and presentation skills; strong team player
• Excellent time management skills; able to prioritize and attend to multiple assignments for self and senior manager(s)
• Comprehensive and efficient research capacity
• Strong oral and written communication skills

Contact

For more information or to express interest, please contact our team at Careers at Excelsior careers@excelsiorfirm.com, title the subject as: “Role: Executive Assistant/Office Manager” and provide your CV/resume, a one page description of why you are best suited for the role, and three references on or before June 10th 2013.

Only applications received through the dedicated email address will be considered.

Excelsior Firm is an equal opportunity employer