Temporary Executive Assistant

Education First is seeking a talented, passionate and experienced full-time, temporary Executive Assistant to join our mission-driven education policy consultancy through December 2024. Reporting to the Senior Executive Assistant, the temporary Executive Assistant will support multiple executives, managing their time and priorities to best support and ensure success. You will provide senior leaders with strategic counsel, technical expertise and critical analysis to ensure senior team members can focus fully on managing the firm and client engagement.

What You’ll Do

• Skillfully manage complex calendars for multiple senior leaders
• Field/triage requests from internal and external stakeholders
• Proactively prioritize and strategically manage conflicting appointments
• Scan for opportunities to promote work time
• Strategic project team and client meeting management
• Manage complex travel and itinerary management (e.g., lodging, flight tracking, travel hiccups etc.)
• Coordinate meeting event logistics with clients for project meetings (e.g., catering, supplies, reservations, meeting room setup and A/V, etc.)
• Provide operational support for senior leaders
• Support financial functions for expense reconciliation and reimbursement
• Create meeting agendas, materials and note transcriptions
• Give design assistance and copy edit proposal drafts and deliverables to ensure they are “client-ready”
• Help build culture-enriching team activities for your senior leaders’ teams (e.g., facilitate team meetings, provide team performance and evaluation assistance, manage life event gifts, etc.)

Requirements

• You are an experienced executive-level administrative professional with experience supporting multiple executives at the same time
• You thrive working in a matrix organization managing several projects with conflicting tasks and complex strategic scheduling across multiple time zones
• You enjoy scheduling complex travel arrangements, compiling expenses and other operational tasks that lead to a successful event
• You are highly proficient in Google Suite and Microsoft Office Suite (Outlook, PowerPoint and Excel)
• You are highly organized and detail oriented person who enjoys using these skills to help others
• You possess excellent verbal and written communication skills
• You lean into being solutions-focused with a customer service orientation that allows you to be adaptable and flexible
• You love learning new technologies, programs and applications (SharePoint, Concur, Salesforce) and enjoy teaching others
• You are able to lead by influence and have strong interpersonal skills and emotional intelligence
• You enjoy taking initiative and being a resourceful problem solver who anticipates barriers to success
• You identify and act upon the critical tasks when faced with multiple competing priorities

Benefits

This is a 100% fully remote position on a U.S. based team. The compensation for this position is $36 USD per hour. The position is expected to work 40 hours per week with an end date of December 20, 2024.

About Education First

Education First is a mission-driven education policy consultancy dedicated to ensuring that all students – and particularly students in poverty and students of color – are prepared for success in college, careers and life. We work with organizations that are shaping the future of P-16 education across the nation, including school networks and districts, state departments of education, policy and advocacy organizations, youth empowerment organizations, talent organizations and foundations.

We help these system leaders catalyze change through our services:

• Conduct research and analysis on policies and provide contextual recommendations and strategic support to translate findings into concrete, sustainable action
• Develop and implement visionary, coherent strategies and strategic plans by prioritizing inclusive voices, focusing on the right problems, and providing space to explore
• Plan and facilitate meaningful convenings for organizations and individuals to learn, problem solve, collaborate, and advance their work
• Design actionable and equitable solutions that meet client needs, achieve program goals, and implement initiatives with clarity and quality
• Support grantmakers, funders, and foundations to develop thoughtful, high-impact investment strategies that align with their goals, interests, and resources

We are a team of more than 75 former teachers, district and state education leaders, policy advisors, and grant makers who live and work virtually in more than 20 states. Because of our experience, we approach the challenges our clients face with humility, realistic solutions, and a commitment to follow-through. Our culture is built on genuine care for our clients and for each other. We celebrate original thinking, collaboration, entrepreneurialism, authenticity and fun.

Our Equity Commitment

We recognize that in order to pursue our own organizational mission at Education First, we must approach our work by studying gaps and inequities, asking tough questions about structural racism and more deliberately engaging diverse voices in problem-solving. We’ve been building our own skills to deliver solutions that center racial equity, with particular attention to equitable ways of thinking and working, and we are committed to helping our clients do the same in projects that have a goal of increasing equity at their core. Within Education First, we have committed to building a race equity culture – creating the conditions to adopt antiracist mindsets and actions.

We believe:

• Black lives matter. We are collectively responsible to amplify and support Black students, families and leaders.
• People are experts in their own experience. We cannot effectively support our clients to problem solve and innovate without centering the people they aim to serve.
• Racism and inequity were designed, and can be redesigned. People make up the systems, policies and processes that govern our experience, and we must support our clients to explore their role in reimagining what could be possible.

For greater detail about our Equity Commitment, please visit our website.

Education First actively engages our team with a robust Race, Inclusion, Diversity and Equity (RIDE) strategy to build our staff and organizational capacity to lead on issues of equity and to increase diversity, equity and inclusion at all levels of the firm. As a proud equal opportunity employer, we strongly encourage applications from candidates of all races, national origins, ages, religions, creeds, veteran or disabled statuses, sexual orientations, gender identities or gender expressions. This policy applies to all employment practices within our organization, including hiring, recruiting, promotion, termination, layoff, recall, leave of absence, compensation, benefits, training, and apprenticeship. Education First makes hiring decisions based solely on qualifications, merit, and business needs at the time.