Executive Assistant, Executive Office at The Audacious Project

 Position Overview:

The Audacious Project is a growing team at TED Conferences looking for an Executive Assistant to administratively staff the Executive Office at the Audacious Project, and contribute to special projects as needed. This individual will serve as Executive Assistant to the Executive Director, and report to the Chief of Staff on special projects and organizational administrative support.  

The person in this role will:

• Provide the Executive Director with administrative support (35%)
  • Fully support the calendaring and administrative needs of the Executive Director of The Audacious Project
  • Manage the Executive Director’s internal and external schedule (heavy calendaring) and make domestic and international travel arrangements
  • Provide correspondence and presentation development support (e.g. in Keynote, PPT)
• Work closely with the Chief of Staff to on team-wide administrative tasks  (40%)
  • With guidance from Chief of Staff, coordinate logistics and operations for all-staff and senior team events and meetings (virtual and in-person)
  • Support Chief of Staff to maintain the team’s administrative and operational tools such as Slack, Google Drive, Nexonia, and internal TED Dashboard page
  • Process team expenses and invoice approvals
  • Liaise with TED-wide operations (accounting, legal, and HR) to ensure that all team members are informed and included in company-wide news and activities, and connected to resources
  • Assist with special projects including maintenance of Audacious CRM system, and support for cross-team data management processes
• Provide administrative / operational support for Audacious special events (e.g. Audacious Project Workshops or gatherings, Annual TED Conference (15%)
• Manage the “Audacious inbox” where a range of inquiries are received from the public (10%)
  • Screen daily emails and compose replies to standard Audacious-related queries
  • Triage and direct follow-up calls and emails to Audacious team members

The ideal candidate:

• 5-10 years of experience supporting an Executive Office or C-Suite Level Executives
• Is proactive, detail oriented, and efficient, knows how to streamline
• Anticipates needs and helps their manager and team members stay focused on their projects by resolving operational & administrative issues before they arise
• Excellent interpersonal & communication skills
• Exercises confidentiality at the highest level
• Managing a wide variety of responsibilities and tasks, and tracking many details and moving pieces concurrently
• Builds efficiency and effective responsiveness into existing operations, and helps define new operational strategies
• Exhibits strong critical thinking and analytical skills; identifies and proposes process improvements
• Is tech savvy, strong online research skills, expertise in Keynote and Powerpoint
• Is conscientious and executes their job with a high sense of ownership
• Loves supporting people (both individuals and the team as a whole), customer service oriented
• Has a deep knowledge and interest in cross-disciplinary topics, socially conscientious and excited about global impact

This is a full-time position based at the TED HQ in Lower Manhattan. Generous health/dental/vision benefits, PTO, and a company-matched 401K are part of the deal. Every employee also gets an annual continuing education stipend to use for professional development.

About The Audacious Project 

The Audacious Project is a collaborative funding initiative that is unlocking social impact on a grand scale. 

TED is a nonprofit dedicated to “Ideas worth spreading,” and we’ve thought for a long time about how to turn big ideas into action. The Audacious Project — a  collaborative funding platform — is a project of TED designed to do this at scale. 

By inviting the world’s change-makers to dream bigger than ever before, the  Audacious Project surfaces ideas with the potential to affect millions of lives and  impact entire systems. Using our curatorial expertise, and in partnership with the Bridgespan Group and several others, we support selected applicants to shape their ideas into actionable, multi-year proposals. We then convene a community of donors who collectively contribute large-scale funding directly to individual organizations.

Our collaborative funding model attempts to address a major frustration faced by  the world’s change-makers: Without access to venture capital or stock markets,  social entrepreneurs have to pitch donors one-by-one -- often a deeply inefficient  process for all involved. Now in its fifth year, the Audacious Project has catalyzed nearly $3 billion for 38 organizations engaged in a wide range of social impact efforts around the world.  

Beyond mobilizing capital, our design is dynamic and responsive to the needs of  projects once they receive transformative funding. To that end, we have set out to build our capacity to help projects achieve their goals for both impact and sustainability. 

TED Conferences LLC is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. We invite all qualified candidates to apply online with their resume.