The Dehumanization of Executive Assistants
An honest look at how being an assistant can be lonely and dehumanizing at times. Plus some encouragement to learn from my mistakes.
Ep 123: Ann Hiatt – Former Executive Business Partner for Jeff Bezos (Amazon) and Chief of Staff for Eric Schmidt (Google)
Ann Hiatt is a Silicon Valley veteran with 15 years of experience as the Executive Business Partner for Jeff Bezos, Founder and CEO of Amazon, and as Chief of Staff for Eric Schmidt, CEO/Executive Chairman of Google. In this episode of The Leader Assistant Podcast, Ann shares the story of how she landed the job supporting Jeff Bezos at Amazon (after a 9 month [...]
Ep 120: Conor Sweeney – Chief of Staff at Box
Conor Sweeney is Principal and Chief of Staff to the Cofounder and CFO at Box, Inc. (BOX) where he oversees business operations, executive communications, and strategic program management across the Global Finance & Operations organization. In this episode, Conor shares one of the best overviews I've ever heard on what a Chief of Staff actually does. He also shares a bit of his story [...]
Ep 118: Monique Helstrom on Communication
After nearly a decade as the Executive Assistant, Producer, and “Chief of Simon Sinek,” New York Times Best-Selling author and TED celebrity, Monique Helstrom has had unparalleled experiences and gained unique perspectives from thought leaders, executives, celebrities, educators, military, and the general workforce that this world depends on. This bonus episode is from one of our weekly Leader Assistant Zoom Chats where Monique joined [...]
Ep 114: Tara Sims – Sr. Manager of Administrative Services at Comcast
Tara Sims is Sr. Manager of Administrative Services at Comcast. She supports the newly named President of Xfinity and Central Division President, and leads a team of administrative professionals that support the Central Division Office. In this fun and engaging conversation, I chat with Tara about confidence, leading an administrative team, building community through consistency, and paying attention to leaders around you. LEADERSHIP QUOTE [...]
Ep 108: Jennifer Brown on Creating Inclusive Workplaces
Jennifer Brown is an award-winning entrepreneur, dynamic speaker and diversity and inclusion expert. In this episode, Jennifer talks about working with a fully remote team, email management from the executive's perspective, and how executive assistants can help cultivate an inclusive workplace. Enjoy the episode and be sure to take Jennifer's free inclusive leader assessment here! LEADERSHIP QUOTE I tell my students, "When you get [...]
Ep #100: Vanessa Nieman – Career Administrative Professional
Vanessa Nieman is a career administrative professional with over 25 years of experience. She worked her way from being a student assistant in her college years, to C-level support at larger organizations. Vanessa's career as an assistant chose her and then she came to embrace the role fully, but even more so in recent years as the support systems and networks for assistants have [...]
Track Your Executive’s Time (If You Want to be a Game-Changing Executive Assistant)
Executive assistants and administrative business partners manage the most valuable asset of an organization – their executive's time. But many of them have never used one of the best game-changing tactics to do so; time-tracking – or auditing an executive's time. In the business world, data is king. It’s one thing to tell the board your executive spends too much time meeting with internal [...]
Ep #95: Scott Miller – WSJ Bestselling Author & Senior Advisor of Thought Leadership at FranklinCovey
Scott Miller is the author of Management Mess to Leadership Success: 30 Challenges to Become the Leader You Would Follow and other bestselling books. As assistants, we're great at learning from each other, attending assistant training events, listening to assistant podcasts, etc. But Leader Assistants will read books and listen to podcasts their executive's listen to, and attend training events that their executive's attend. [...]
Ep #93: James Sobczak – Executive Assistant at The University of Chicago
UPDATE: Unfortunately, James passed away on October 12, 2022. My condolences to his family and friends. James Sobczak [SOB-zak] is currently an executive assistant staffing both the Chief Physician & Dean for Clinical Affairs and the Dean for Academic Affairs in the Biological Sciences Division at the University of Chicago. James is a kind, articulate, wise executive assistant and I'm so thrilled to share [...]