Special Assistant, Office of the CEO

Position Reports to: Chief Executive Officer

Start Date: Immediate 

Hours: 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM (Hybrid) + occasional early mornings and evenings

Compensation: $75,000 - $105,000 (EHTP offers a competitive salary commensurate with experience and a comprehensive benefits package)

FLSA Status: Exempt 

Who We Are

East Harlem Tutorial Program (EHTP) began in 1958 as a children's reading group and has since grown into a multi-site after-school program for traditional public school students and a network of public charter schools focused on significantly increasing the college graduation rate in East Harlem. We are on track to serve at least 25% of East Harlem students by 2025, with enrollment for this year at approximately 2200 students in our schools and after school programs. In 2020, 99% of our seniors were accepted to college, and our current scholars in college are on-track to graduate at eight times the national average of their peers.

At EHTP we also aim to serve as an agent of change and thoughtfully contribute to the national fight for racial equity. Through our organization-wide commitment to anti-racism work, we prepare our scholars to effect change, challenge the status quo, and thrive in the world around them. As staff members, we face our own racial identities and conscious and unconscious biases. With this in mind, all of our professional development, curriculum, organizational materials, and processes are designed with a goal of racial justice. Read our racial equity statement here.

We ground all of our work in racial equity, in our core values, and in our four guiding pursuits: the Revolutionary Pursuit of Love, the Radical Pursuit of Knowledge, the Responsive Pursuit of Healing, and in the Relentless Pursuit of Results. These pursuits inform and are reflected in our current four key strategic priorities: to increase high-impact, high-quality academic curriculum, programming content, staff capacity, and coaching; to embrace and advance our use of technology; to deepen our embodiment of ethical and equitable radical humanity; and to efficiently operationalize teaching, learning, community, and care.

About The Opportunity

We are seeking a highly motivated, experienced, and resourceful administrative professional with exceptional organizational and communication skills to provide support to our Chief Executive Officer & Chief of Staff. This position will provide you the opportunity to work on a wide range of projects, providing the experience and exposure that goes well beyond a typical administrative position. 

The Special Assistant is an extension of the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and the purpose of the job is to make the CEO more efficient and effective leaders by creating capacity for them to focus on the most important things. As Special Assistant, you will be exposed to an extremely wide range of responsibilities. You will help drive special projects, participate in external meetings with board members, conduct research, lead new initiatives, and manage schedules. Confidentiality is key, as you will be exposed to the most sensitive company information. You will manage the CEO’s calendar, coordinate all logistics for board meetings and maintain a master calendar tracking the office’s activities, deadlines, and events. You will schedule meetings and appointments, facilitate timely communications to and from the CEO, and create and maintain filing systems. 

You should be a skillful and friendly communicator with excellent organizational skills and judgment, and an attention to detail. You are an energetic team-player who is able to prioritize demands in real-time in a fast-paced environment. You are also committed to antiracist values. The best person for this role is an individual that sees that there is no ceiling to what they can accomplish and learn in this role. The right individual for this job is highly ambitious in his/her pursuit of growth and achieving excellence. They know that their ability to grow and take on more responsibility will result in more opportunities for growth and greater responsibility.

The Scope of Your Role 

• Manage the CEO’s extremely busy, and constantly changing calendar, prioritize issues and deadlines, and follow up on team requirements to ensure effective time management and mission accomplishments, follow up on all issues promptly and with full attention to detail.
• Provide support for presentations, board meetings, and special projects, to include final material review and production of presentations and materials for dissemination internally and externally.
• Schedule and attend Board meetings; take accurate minutes and produce final copies on deadlines to establish accountabilities for commitments made in those meetings.
• Create and proof correspondence including; emails, letters, memos and reports as required, demonstrate experienced senior professional level written communication skills.
• Manage CEO and staff commitments to the executive team, ensuring tracking and meeting deadlines, and particularly following up on tasks from the executive team to ensure follow-through and meeting commitments.
• Align workflow and priorities by managing the schedules and anticipating the needs of the Office of the CEO in coordination and collaboration internally and externally.
• Provide leverage in moving projects forward by gathering and effectively organizing required information, communicating effectively and professionally with internal and external stakeholders and internal team members, developing and monitoring plans, and keeping track of responsibilities and commitments of the team members and executive staff.
• Prepare for and follow up on internal and external meetings. 
• When needed, participating directly in external meetings and following up with the relevant parties.
• Manage travel logistics (domestic and international) with perfect attention to detail including all aspects of local and distance travel, directions, appointment and meeting locations and venues.
• Maintain absolute and complete confidentiality of sensitive information.

What Qualifies You

• The ideal candidate is highly organized, high energy, proactive, positive, and productive.
• You are exceptionally resourceful -- with great attention to detail in all aspects of your role.
• You are known for your integrity. You always choose to make the right decision versus the easy decision. 
• You know what information is sensitive, and you will protect it accordingly. 
• You take your reputation very seriously.
• You have excellent judgment. You have the rare combination of being able to make quick decisions with your gut and measured decisions with your head. 
• You can pull on your strong analytical abilities or your instincts at the right times to make the right judgment call.
• You have a positive, roll-up-your-sleeves mindset and are willing to take on “lower-level” and “higher level” work based on what needs to be done.
• You take ownership.
• You constantly seek opportunities to optimize processes and improve efficiency. 
• You’re communicative and comfortable working with and through a range of different people and build relationships quickly.
• You are resilient and flexible.
• You seek out direct feedback and see every challenge as an opportunity to grow. 
• You are thoughtful and intentional. You always think steps ahead. 
• Before asking questions, you prepare your own answers, even if they are just first draft thoughts.
• You are resourceful and practical. 
• You are able to take different kinds of input, quickly and effectively sort out action plans.
• You are an especially astute listener and you pick up subtle cues that others may miss.
• You are effective in your spoken and written communication.
• You can be diplomatic, firm, gentle, and even direct when you need to accomplish the goal.
• You are empathetic and a keen people reader.
• You are mature and even keeled. 
• You are wise and can handle the most stressful situations with grace. In an emergency, you are the calmest individual in the room.
• You are detail oriented and contentious.
• You cringe at typos, and you are the first to identify a formatting error. 
• You obsess about the details in a healthy way. 
• You are a big picture thinker. 
• Despite all the details that you manage, you constantly see the big picture to help inform your thinking and prioritization.

Your Background and Work Experience

• 3+ years full time professional experience, including exposure to executive and/or board leadership teams.
• Excellent oral and written communication skills. 
• Ability to work independently, strong organizational skills, excellent problem solving, and respect for confidential information.
• Project management experience is necessary and the ability to meet deadlines. 
• Strong customer services orientation.
• Bilingual skills in speaking English and Spanish is strongly preferred. 

Thank you for taking the time to submit your application.