Executive Assistant / Personal Assistant to CEO

This role exists to look after Bryony, to ensure that she can thrive in her role whilst ensuring that she takes good care of her own health and wellbeing.

Key contextual information:

• Bryony is a pancreatic cancer survivor, having undergone aggressive surgery and chemo throughout 2020. This has left her with a number of hidden disabilities, and chronic fatigue.
• Bryony has a 10 year old daughter, and husband who are a bit fed up with her working at weekends.
• We are ambitious business plan to launch a global software product which is the culmination of 10+ years of Bryony’s life, and an investment of around £2.5m
• An active campaigner and spokesperson for Pancreatic Cancer UK
• We have a full time MD is moving into the business, and we will need to find ways to work well and bring out the best in each other.

Things Bryony needs to juggle:

• Being a mum and wife, and enjoying time for herself.
• Managing her healthcare needs, appointments, physio, etc.
• Being the owner of two businesses, and building the team they need to thrive.
• Being a speaker at events and conferences, with travel and dietary challenges.
• Making time for writing and other thought leadership activity.
• Campaigning for Pancreatic Cancer UK.

What we think we need:

• Someone focused on looking after Bryony and doing what needs doing to help her thrive.
• An initial project to clear backlog (2000+ emails in inbox) and create workflows.
• A watching brief on everything (work, family, campaigning, etc.) that is on Bry’s to-do list, working with her to ditch or delegate anything that does not contribute to our core goals.
• Robust diary planning at the beginning of each month to look at priorities and plan it into Bry’s diary, spotting pinch points, dependencies, and any wellbeing knock-ons.
• Weekly task planning to actually put what Bry is doing into the time she has, tracking what actually gets done and replanning as needed.
• Spotting anything that consistently trips us up and working together to find a better way.
• Fanatical management of Bry’s diary - nobody (not even her) should be able to put something in Bry's diary without going through you.
• Email management - there are well over 2000 emails in Bry’s inbox and she regularly misses things that should be tasks or fails to file key things that she then can't find later.
• Filing - the newly emerging team need to develop a filing system that we can all use, and Bryony needs help to stick to it.
• Handling all travel, accommodation and dietary needs - Bry’s new body makes all of this quite hard, and she finds it embarrassing to talk to clients about and needs someone to do this for her - this may sometimes require a companion to travel with Bryony to assist with accessibility challenges.

About you:

The person we’re looking for will have a beautiful balance of loving a good system for getting core tasks into a rhythm, whilst also being able to respond calmly to the unexpected things that crop up in a fast-growing small business. These are the sorts of attributes we’re looking for:

• Calm under pressure - we are experiencing huge growth, and doing big difficult things, almost constant change won’t phase you.
• Good humoured - we’re a down-to-earth team of fallible humans that will need someone who can adapt to the personalities around them.
• Empathetic - the challenges of growth, combined with living with a number of hidden disabilities, means that our founder (Bryony) needs someone who sees and supports her wellbeing in the role.
• Loves a puzzle - you’re not going to be handed answers on a plate, and you won’t inherit seamless systems. It will be your role to work this stuff out.
• Worldly wisdom - we’ve been around the block and so have our clients, you’re going to fit right in if you’re got a few battle scars.

Logistical information:

• You will need to be able to work remotely most of the time, with at least a weekly trip to Bryony’s home office near Stroud.
• We are happy to consider freelance or employed contracts.
• You would ideally have experience in both Mac and PC, and in Office and Google Docs - or be willing and able to learn.
• Core hours are 10-2pm daily, with other hours worked as convenient or as needed around this.
• You may be invited to work more hours at peak points in the year, this would be by agreement.
• We are hoping to interview during February and in role in March.

To apply:

• Please click apply to send your CV with a covering letter
• Apply by 23rd January 2022