Senior Executive Assistant to the CEO

The Military Child Education Coalition® is a national nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting military-connected children by educating, advocating, and collaborating to resolve education challenges associated with the military lifestyle.

Founded in 1998, MCEC has served military-connected children, families, educators, and youth-serving professionals for more than 26 years. Today, MCEC is recognized as a national leader in military child education, student transition support, parent engagement, professional development, and advocacy.

MCEC is in an important season of transformation. We are modernizing our infrastructure, strengthening our systems, expanding our reach, and building for the future. We are a remote-first organization with a strong national mission, a highly engaged Board of Directors, and a growing need for disciplined, thoughtful, and proactive executive support.

The Senior Executive Assistant to the President & CEO is a high-trust, high-action role that ensures the Office of the CEO runs with discipline, accuracy, preparation, and follow-through. This person manages the systems, rhythms, details, and follow-through that allow the Office of the CEO to operate with clarity and momentum.

This is not a traditional administrative role. The right person will be energized by a fast-moving, remote-first environment where priorities shift, details matter, and follow-through is essential. Someone who has worked in a startup, growth-stage, transformation-stage, or lean mission-driven organization may do especially well in this role.

The Senior Executive Assistant will manage the CEO’s calendar, prepare materials for key meetings, track commitments, draft routine CEO communications, lead operational board readiness, coordinate external engagement logistics, and build practical systems that make the Office of the CEO more efficient.

This role requires excellent judgment, strong writing skills, digital fluency, discretion, and a deep bias toward action. The ideal candidate is proactive, organized, calm under pressure, highly responsive, and comfortable operating with incomplete information. They know how to move work forward, communicate status clearly, and close loops without waiting to be asked.

The President & CEO’s time is spent across a wide range of internal and external priorities, including board governance, executive leadership, donor and partner engagement, military-connected stakeholder relationships, speaking engagements, staff communication, strategic plan execution, and organizational transformation.

The Senior Executive Assistant helps ensure the CEO is ready for that work.

This includes protecting and managing the CEO’s calendar, preparing briefing materials, anticipating what is needed before meetings, tracking follow-up, coordinating with internal leaders, supporting the Board Chair, and ensuring that important commitments do not fall through the cracks.

This person will often be the first point of coordination for people seeking the CEO’s time. They must be able to triage requests with judgment, professionalism, and care, especially when working with board members, donors, military leaders, senior spouses, government partners, and other high-trust stakeholders.

• Manage the CEO’s calendar with discipline, judgment, and attention to strategic priorities.
• Ensure meetings are purposeful, well-timed, and supported by clear agendas, materials, context, and follow-up.
• Triage meeting requests based on urgency, reputation risk, board needs, military-connected stakeholder relationships, donor and partner importance, and alignment with CEO priorities.
• Prepare the CEO for internal and external meetings by gathering background information, drafting briefing notes, confirming logistics, and identifying key context.
• Monitor upcoming commitments and ensure the CEO has what is needed before deadlines, meetings, events, and travel.
• Coordinate CEO travel, lodging, itineraries, and related logistics.

• Track CEO commitments, meeting actions, deadlines, and follow-up items.
• Create and maintain clear systems to ensure decisions, next steps, owners, and timelines are documented and visible.
• Provide timely status updates so the CEO does not need to chase information.
• Build and maintain an Office of the CEO Standard Operating Procedure, including workflows, templates, naming conventions, recurring processes, board support rhythms, communication practices, and tool-based efficiencies.
• Identify opportunities to reduce friction, streamline processes, and improve the way the Office of the CEO operates in a remote-first environment.

• Serve as the primary operational owner for BoardEffect and related board support systems.
• Manage BoardEffect workrooms, meeting materials, calendars, document organization, committee resources, permissions, voting workflows, and board communications logistics.
• Coordinate board and committee meeting scheduling, materials collection, agenda support, attendance tracking, and follow-up.
• Take notes for board committee meetings and prepare clear, accurate meeting records and follow-up items.
• Coordinate with the Board Secretary, who retains responsibility for the Executive Committee and full Board minutes.
• Lead the operational onboarding process for new board members, including BoardEffect access, onboarding materials, calendar invites, forms, contact information, meeting logistics, and orientation coordination.
• Provide limited scheduling and administrative support to the Board Chair when connected to CEO, board, or governance priorities.
• Partner with the Chief of Staff when board materials require strategic framing, decision support, executive-level presentation development, or board engagement strategy.

• Draft first-pass routine communications in the CEO’s voice, including meeting follow-ups, board logistics messages, stakeholder correspondence, thank-you notes, scheduling responses, speaker bureau communications, event-related messages, and selected internal updates.
• Ensure routine board, donor, partner, and stakeholder correspondence is timely, polished, accurate, and aligned with the CEO’s tone.
• Track open correspondence, pending responses, and follow-up commitments so routine communications are completed within expected timelines.
• Escalate communications to the Chief of Staff when they require strategic framing, change management context, board-level narrative, high-stakes positioning, or sensitive organizational judgment.

• Coordinate CEO speaking engagements, partner meetings, donor meetings, military-connected stakeholder engagements, and external events.
• Manage scheduling, registration, travel logistics, meeting links, briefing packet assembly, speaker forms, calendar holds, and related administrative details.
• Track follow-up items from external engagements and route next steps to the CEO, Chief of Staff, Advancement, ELT members, or other appropriate owners.
• Escalate external engagements to the Chief of Staff when they involve strategic opportunity, reputational risk, donor strategy, board implications, cross-functional work, or CEO-sponsored priorities.

• Operate effectively in a fully remote environment with strong written communication, responsiveness, and personal accountability.
• Use digital tools to create clarity, reduce manual work, and improve executive office efficiency.
• Maintain strong proficiency with Google Workspace, Slack, Asana, Zoom, BoardEffect or similar board portals, CRM systems, scheduling tools, AI-enabled note and workflow tools, and other collaboration platforms.
• Use CRM systems to support relationship tracking and follow-up, with Raiser’s Edge experience preferred.
• Look for practical ways to automate, template, organize, and improve recurring workflows.

• Bring fluency in military culture, protocol, service hierarchies, honorifics, titles, acronyms, operational structures, and nomenclature to support scheduling, meeting preparation, correspondence, and external engagement.
• Use sound judgment when navigating sensitive or high-visibility military and government-adjacent relationships.
• Ensure CEO materials, calendar invitations, correspondence, and briefing notes reflect appropriate protocol and professional standards for senior military, government, philanthropic, and board-level stakeholders.
  

Within the first 90 days, success will look like:

• The CEO’s calendar is more organized, strategic, and manageable.
• Meetings have clear agendas, materials, context, and follow-up.
• The CEO is better prepared for board, donor, partner, internal, and external meetings.
• BoardEffect is organized, current, and used consistently.
• Board committee meetings are supported with accurate notes and timely follow-up.
• New board member onboarding is operationally clear, organized, and consistent.
• CEO commitments are tracked, communicated, and completed.
• The Office of the CEO SOP has been started and is actively improving.
• Digital tools are being used to reduce friction and improve remote work.
• External requests, speaking engagements, and stakeholder follow-up are handled with ownership and professionalism.