Location: ESF Headquarters — Bryn Mawr, PA
Schedule: Full-Time, Monday-Friday
Employment Type: Full-Time
Work Arrangement:In-Person at ESF Headquarters — This is not a remote or hybrid position.
Position Summary
ESF is seeking a highly organized, proactive, persistent, and results-oriented Executive Assistant to the CEO. This is a high-impact, in-person position based at ESF's headquarters in Bryn Mawr, PA, for someone who combines exceptional executive support skills with strong project management, communication, and follow-through.
This individual will serve as an extension of the CEO—helping manage a high volume of relationships, meetings, projects, priorities, and follow-up across ESF's employees, clients, partners, and other key stakeholders.
A critical part of this position is making things happen. The successful candidate will be highly comfortable picking up the phone, reaching people directly, securing meetings, following up persistently, and ensuring the CEO is having the conversations that need to happen every day. With a large network of employees, clients, institutional partners, and business relationships, this person must enjoy connecting with people and be exceptionally effective at getting others on the phone and onto the calendar.
This is not simply a calendar-management position. We are looking for someone who can manage projects, drive deadlines, close loops, anticipate next steps, and take ownership of outcomes.
Because of the highly collaborative and fast-moving nature of the position, regular in-person presence at ESF Headquarters is an essential requirement of the role. The Executive Assistant must be accessible to the CEO and leadership team throughout the workday and able to respond quickly as priorities change.
The ideal candidate is resourceful, confident, personable, persistent, highly accountable, and comfortable operating in a fast-paced entrepreneurial environment.
Key Responsibilities
CEO Calendar, Calls, and Relationship Management
- Own and actively manage the CEO's daily calendar, balancing internal meetings, client conversations, partner relationships, business development opportunities, and organizational priorities.
- Proactively schedule calls and meetings every day with employees, clients, partners, prospects, and other key relationships.
- Be highly comfortable picking up the phone and calling people directly rather than relying exclusively on email or text.
- Persistently and professionally follow up with individuals until important meetings and conversations are scheduled.
- Develop strong working relationships with executive assistants, clients, partners, employees, vendors, and other stakeholders to make scheduling and communication easier and more effective.
- Maintain an active list of people the CEO needs to connect with and proactively work through that list.
- Identify important relationships or conversations that have gone too long without follow-up and bring them forward.
- Coordinate and confirm meetings, ensuring attendees, locations, links, agendas, and supporting materials are accurate.
- Manage cancellations, changes, and rescheduling quickly while protecting the CEO's time and priorities.
Project Management & Follow-Through
- Serve as a project manager for CEO-level priorities and special initiatives, ensuring ideas and commitments translate into action.
- Maintain a clear, organized system of projects, priorities, deadlines, owners, and next steps.
- Track commitments made during meetings and conversations and ensure appropriate follow-up occurs.
- Coordinate across departments and individuals to keep projects moving forward.
- Regularly follow up with project owners on deliverables, deadlines, and outstanding items.
- Identify potential delays, obstacles, or missed deadlines before they become problems.
- Push projects forward without requiring constant direction from the CEO.
- Provide the CEO with concise updates on what has been completed, what is outstanding, and where decisions or intervention are needed.
- Take ownership of assignments from beginning to completion and close the loop on every important task.
Executive Support & Administration
- Monitor and organize the CEO's email inbox, helping prioritize important communications and identify items requiring action or follow-up.
- Help ensure important emails, calls, commitments, and requests do not fall through the cracks.
- Coordinate meeting requirements with the Marketing team and other departments, including requesting and organizing presentation decks, reports, and supporting materials.
- Manage business and personal travel arrangements for the CEO.
- Prepare itineraries, meeting information, contact details, and other materials needed for travel and important meetings.
- Maintain an ongoing and prioritized list of CEO projects, commitments, follow-ups, and outstanding decisions.
- Anticipate the CEO's needs and proactively address administrative and logistical requirements.
- Handle miscellaneous daily requests quickly and effectively.
- Maintain strict confidentiality regarding sensitive company, employee, client, financial, and personal information.
Internal & External Communication
- Serve as an effective liaison between the CEO and ESF's leadership team, employees, clients, partners, and outside organizations.
- Communicate professionally and confidently on behalf of the CEO when appropriate.
- Develop an understanding of ESF's organization, key employees, clients, partners, and strategic priorities.
- Know who to call, how to reach them, and how to get a response when something needs to move forward.
- Build trust throughout the organization so employees are comfortable working through this individual to communicate and coordinate with the CEO.
Qualifications & Skills
The ideal candidate will have:
- Previous experience as an Executive Assistant, Senior Executive Assistant, Project Manager, Project Coordinator, Chief of Staff Associate, Office Manager, or similar high-accountability role.
- Demonstrated project management ability, including managing multiple projects, deadlines, stakeholders, and deliverables simultaneously.
- Exceptional organizational and time-management skills.
- Exceptional follow-through and persistence.
- A natural willingness to pick up the phone and get people on the phone.
- Strong interpersonal skills and the confidence to communicate with executives, employees, clients, partners, and senior external stakeholders.
- The ability to respectfully but persistently follow up until an answer, meeting, or deliverable is secured.
- Strong attention to detail and an ability to keep track of numerous moving pieces.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
- Ability to distinguish between what is urgent, what is important, and what can wait.
- Ability to anticipate needs and take action without waiting for detailed instructions.
- Strong judgment and problem-solving skills.
- Ability to work independently while keeping the CEO appropriately informed.
- Professional discretion and an ability to maintain confidentiality.
- Strong proficiency with Microsoft Outlook, Teams, PowerPoint, Excel, and other business technology.
- Experience coordinating meetings, travel, events, and complex projects.
- Ability to remain calm, flexible, positive, and solutions-oriented in a fast-moving environment.
- Ability and willingness to work in person at ESF Headquarters in Bryn Mawr, PA during the established work schedule.
What Success Looks Like
The person who excels in this position will become an indispensable extension of the CEO. At the end of each day:
- The CEO has connected with the people he needed to connect with.
- Important calls and meetings are scheduled and confirmed.
- Employees, clients, and partners receive timely follow-up.
- Projects have moved forward.
- Commitments and deadlines have been tracked.
- Open items have clear owners and next steps.
- Problems have been anticipated rather than discovered too late.
- Very little falls through the cracks.
Above all, this person will have a bias toward action. When something needs to happen, they don't simply send an email and wait. They follow up, make the call, find another path, coordinate the right people, and stay with it until the objective is accomplished.