Executive Assistant to MD, SSA

The Executive Assistant provides high quality secretarial and administrative support to the Managing Director Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), including ad-hoc and personal assistance. The role involves interacting with all levels within the department, Vice-Presidency, and Bank-wide, as well as external clients and institutions. The Executive Assistant is responsible for the smooth running of the Managing Director's business activities, including extensive travel planning, diary management, and a variety of ad-hoc tasks.

• Efficient diary management
• Monitoring e-mails; screening and prioritising messages and replying on behalf of the Managing Director where appropriate; manage incoming telephone calls; prioritising communications and re-routing as necessary and taking comprehensive messages
• Drafting correspondence for the Managing Director signature/review; taking minutes; proof-reading and checking documents to ensure quality management and control.
• Coordinate team submissions acting as quality control & ensuring all deadlines are met.
• Arrange all elements of travel according to EBRD travel policy including arranging visas, accommodation, ordering currency and preparing itineraries.
• Check travel expense reports and other expenditure for the relevant cost centres to ensure adherence to the Bank's policy; monitor and assist the MD in claiming expenses in a timely manner.
• Maintain comprehensive filing in various hard copy and electronic systems and archiving for Managers'/team to ensure instant retrieval of documents.
• Liaise with the relevant Committee Secretariats with regard to the scheduling of their department's items at Bank committee meetings and Board of Directors' meetings
• Produce and/or prepare team related documents such as Power Point presentations, business correspondence, factsheets, briefing notes, reports ensuring all deadlines are met and contents are accurate in accordance with the requirements of the relevant Bank Committee procedures.
• Conduct ad-hoc or specific tasks assigned by Line Manager which may be related amongst others to pipeline or reporting.
• Support RO visitors to HQ e.g. finding office space / arranging printing/other HQ-based assistance, etc. to extent not provided by their own Country MD front office.
• Provide occasional cover for the Banking VP front office.

• Degree and/or equivalent relevant business experience
• A recognised secretarial qualification would be useful, but is not essential;
• Fluent English, with excellent written and oral communications skills
• Knowledge of another language e.g French both written and spoken would be desirable
• Proven experience at working at a senior level within a multi-disciplined and multi-cultural organisation
• Excellent organisational and effective planning skills with a demonstrated ability to prioritise and independently co-ordinate workload to comply with deadlines
• Ability to keep calm under pressure and be flexible; also be able to anticipate needs/issues, drawing on a high degree of initiative and judgement in reliably executing or coordinating a range of tasks independently
• Excellent interpersonal skills; including tact and diplomacy
• A proactive and can-do attitude, approach and team ethic
• Good level of numeracy and ability to work with numbers
• Internal candidates to have a thorough knowledge of the Bank's procedures, policies and of institutional working practices
• Strong written and verbal communication skills in English
• Good material presentation skills with attention to detail and the ability to judge required accuracy.
• Willingness to take on additional responsibilities
• Excellent time keeper
• Due to the complex nature of the role the Executive Assistant should be comfortable interacting with staff at a very senior level both within their own department and Vice-Presidency as well as Bank wide
• EBRD experience and/or knowledge of the Bank's policies and systems desirable e.g. SAP, Project Link, Live-link, Bold-net, DTM; and Data Warehouse Reports etc.
• At least 55 wpm typing
• Intermediate/advanced computer literacy Word, Excel, Outlook and PowerPoint as well as the ability to format large documents, charts and tables to publication quality is essential
• Knowledge of SAP desirable but not essential