The Position: The Director’s Executive Secretary plays an essential part in ensuring the smooth running of the Director’s Office, providing efficient and accurate administration support to the Director, the Director of Strategic Operations and the Development Office. ResponsibilitiesThe Executive Assistant will be required to interact with people who are strategically important to the Institute and is therefore responsible for portraying a favourable and highly professional impression to external contacts. The Executive Assistant / Executive Secretary will also need to be able to manage the Director’s competing demands with a high degree of confidence and professionalism.

The Executive Assistant will also need to make a significant contribution to the effective performance of Director by supporting his administrative and information needs. Responsibilities will include diary management, complex travel arrangements and expenses, managing correspondence, as well as discretely handling confidential and sensitive information, information gathering and web searching. The role necessitates a high degree of autonomy and initiative and the need to make decisions on a daily basis within the agreed standards and framework, in a context of changing demands.

The duties are drawn from the following broad categories of activity:Administration♦ Proactively managing the Director’s complex and flexible diary, assisting him to maximise his time productivity, such as advising him on upcoming commitments, prioritisation, managing regular changes and dealing professionally with competing meeting requests. ♦ Making complex travel arrangements (including international), hotel bookings, visa requirements etc. with minimal supervision, within known preferences♦ Liaising with the Director and actively updating his work plan, projects and responsibilities, including monitoring of commitments and deadlines, maintaining confidentiality. ♦ Making arrangements for Strategic Management Group, Board and Board sub-committee meetings, including booking rooms, arranging catering, travel arrangements for external participants and collation and circulation of relevant papers and agendas.

♦ Managing the Directorate filing systems, mailing list and contacts database, taking telephone messages and dealing appropriately with incoming and outgoing post. ♦ Providing general administrative duties including word processing, collating and preparing documents. ♦ Participating in team meetings, retreats and other institute events.

♦ Supplying comprehensive information in response to internal and external requests to include in website/intranet services. ♦ Basic library and internet searches and presentation of information in appropriate formats. ♦ General secretarial support for the Director of Strategy Operations and Development Officer as required♦ Other clerical duties and special projects as arise.

Finance and legal♦ Responsible for processing all expense claims for Directorate members’ activities. ♦ Responsible for recording and monitoring Director’s expenditure within agreed guidelines. Liaison♦ Working with Director and Directorate Coordinator to respond to general information requests and to disseminate information through e-mail, mail, publications and web pages.

♦ Providing assistance to visitors and staff as appropriate to their position, seniority and urgency. ♦ Acting as key contact to provide general information in response to institute related enquiries from staff contact details, dates of meetings, etc. Qualifications