Sr. Executive Assistant

 

About the Sr. Executive Assistant Role 

We are seeking an experienced, highly organized Senior Executive Assistant to support a senior partner at Keystone who also serves as a professor at Harvard Business School, with active research and teaching responsibilities. 

This is a high-touch role requiring exceptional judgment, discretion, responsiveness, and attention to detail. The Senior Executive Assistant will manage a high-volume calendar and significant travel across client, academic, research, teaching, and other professional commitments. The role requires effective coordination across Keystone and HBS while navigating competing priorities and changing schedules. 

The ideal candidate is proactive, resourceful, and highly dependable, with the ability to operate effectively in a complex, fast-paced environment and stay ahead of competing demands. 

 

Key Responsibilities 

Calendar Management and Gatekeeping 

• Own complex, high-volume calendars across multiple time zones, making independent decisions about priorities, conflicts, and trade-offs. 

• Protect time for deep work, travel recovery, and personal commitments, and adapt quickly as priorities shift. 

• Act as a trusted gatekeeper and point of contact for senior internal and external stakeholders, including clients. 

• Determine who needs direct access and who can be redirected, and decline requests diplomatically without damaging relationships. 

• Triage incoming requests, flag what needs the executives' attention, and handle what doesn't independently. 

Communications and Inbox Management 

• Manage executive inboxes by surfacing priorities, drafting responses, filing and archiving, and ensuring nothing time-sensitive slips. 

• Draft, edit, and send correspondence on behalf of the executives, adapting tone and content to the audience, from clients and senior leaders to internal teams. 

• Build strong relationships with internal and external stakeholders to deliver a seamless, professional executive experience. 

Meeting Preparation and Follow-Through 

• Anticipate needs ahead of meetings by preparing briefing materials, agendas, attendee backgrounds, and relevant context. 

• Ensure the executives walk into every meeting prepared. 

• Schedule and coordinate internal meetings, client meetings, and team events, including room bookings, catering, A/V, and virtual logistics. 

• Capture action items and drive follow-ups to completion, tracking open loops across both executives so nothing stalls. 

• Provide regular updates to the executives on outstanding items and next steps. 

Strategic Initiatives and Project Support 

• Help build and scale new initiatives, coordinating timelines, workstreams, and stakeholders across internal teams, clients, and external expert networks. 

• Track deliverables and deadlines, prepare status updates, and keep the executives informed of progress and risks. 

• Build and maintain relationships with external experts, partners, and vendors, coordinating outreach, scheduling, and logistics. 

• Identify opportunities to streamline processes, templates, and recurring workflows, and implement improvements. 

Administrative Support 

• Plan and manage complex domestic and international travel end-to-end, including flights, hotels, itineraries, visas, ground transportation, and real-time changes. 

• Process expenses and reimbursements accurately and on schedule, and reconcile corporate card activity. 

• Manage hours submission and timekeeping for the Partners, ensuring accurate and timely entries that support client billing. 

• Maintain organized filing systems, contact lists, and records for easy retrieval. 

• Prepare, format, and proofread documents, presentations, and reports to a client-ready standard. 

• Coordinate onboarding logistics for new team members and serve as a liaison with office operations, IT, and finance. 

• Handle confidential information, including personnel, client, and financial matters, with complete discretion. 

 

Qualifications 

• 5–7 years of executive support experience, including supporting senior leaders (Partner, C-suite, or equivalent) in professional services, finance, consulting, or a similarly fast-paced environment. 

• A track record of operating with autonomy: you make good calls without being told and know when to escalate. 

• Exceptional organization and attention to detail across competing priorities, with the ability to support more than one executive at once. 

• Excellent written communication: you write clearly, concisely, and professionally, and can draft in an executive's voice with minimal editing. 

• Strong verbal communication and interpersonal skills, with the presence and poise to interact confidently with clients, senior stakeholders, and external partners. 

• Skill at managing up, pushing back diplomatically, and handling sensitive conversations with tact. 

• Absolute discretion with confidential information. 

• Advanced proficiency in Microsoft Office (Outlook, Word, PowerPoint, Excel) and comfort learning new tools quickly. 

 

Why Join Us 

At Keystone, you will join a collaborative and intellectually rigorous environment where operational excellence supports meaningful, high-impact client work. We offer competitive compensation, comprehensive benefits, and a culture grounded in integrity, curiosity, and teamwork.