An Executive Virtual Assistant is a support role built around one or two senior people rather than around a

department. The work is defined by proximity: the assistant sees your diary, your correspondence and the

commitments you make in meetings, and ends up holding a picture of your week that nobody else in the

business has. That closeness is why the role reports directly to the person it supports, with no manager

in between, and why the early part of a placement goes into learning judgement rather than tasks — which

meetings you will always take, which requests are politely deferred, whose name in your inbox means

answer today.

It is worth being clear about what the role is not. An Executive Virtual Assistant does not set strategy, own

commercial decisions or line-manage your team; that is a chief of staff, and it is a different hire. What this role

removes is the distance between a decision you have already made and the administration that decision

creates.

Work arrives in two streams — standing routines the assistant runs unprompted, such as diary review, brief

preparation and follow-up chasing, and ad hoc requests you raise in passing — and comes back either

finished or as a short summary carrying the single question only you can answer. Good looks unremarkable: a

diary that reflects your priorities, an inbox that no longer sets your agenda, and commitments that get chased

without you holding them in your head.