Job Description
Job Title: Senior Executive Assistant to the CEO
Contract: Full-time, 2 year fixed-term with potential to extend
Cluster/Team: Executive Office
Location: Hybrid / High Wycombe – requirement to work in the office 1 days per week, with flexibility.
Job Band: From £36,000 to £37,500 per annum plus £312 working from home allowance.
Total £36,312 to £37,812 per annum inclusive of the working from home allowance.
Reports To: CEO
Role Purpose:
To work closely with Embrace’s CEO
providing effective Board and committee governance support. You will ensure
clear preparation of Board papers, managing the tracking of decisions and
actions agreed by Trustees and the CEO, alongside providing executive office
support to the CEO. You will play a key role in supporting the charity to
deliver strategic priorities and maintain strong charity governance. The role calls for someone who works
proactively and independently, able to anticipate needs, resolve issues early
and maintain well organised, reliable systems, while also collaborating
effectively with the wider leadership team to ensure information is kept up to
date and actions responded to in a timely manner.
What success looks like: ·
- Work with the CEO and members of the Leadership Group to compile and confidentially manage Board and Committee documents including the Board of Trustees SharePoint site, ensuring these meet regulatory requirements and Articles of Association.
- The CEO’s diary and inbox are proactively managed, with strong preparation for all meetings and external engagements.
- Board papers are consistently high quality, issued on time, and Trustees are sufficiently supported to fulfil their governance responsibilities.
- Action and decision tracking is robust, with priorities progressed and risks or delays flagged early.
- Organisation-wide projects and events are clearly tracked, with timely reporting for the CEO to be able to understand progress.
- Clear, professional communication and strong working relationships are maintained across the organisation and with trustees and external stakeholders
Key Responsibilities:
Board and Governance
- Support the CEO in enabling effective governance by the Board of Trustees, ensuring meetings are
well‑planned, documents are circulated in a timely manner, and minutes are
accurate and impartial.
-
Coordinate the annual Board and committee calendar, including residentials, ensuring meeting schedules comply with governance requirements and are agreed and communicated in a timely way.
-
Maintain action logs and decision trackers, monitoring progress and supporting timely follow‑up to
strengthen accountability and assurance.
Maintain accurate records of Trustee terms of office, appointments, reappointments, resignations, and declarations of interest.
- Support compliance with statutory, regulatory, and internal governance requirements, including Charity Commission and Companies House expectations, safeguarding, data protection, and
confidentiality.
- Assist with governance‑related processes such as Trustee onboarding, induction materials, training
coordination, and annual governance reviews.
- Anticipate risks and chase actions and decisions ensuring governance cycles are met and proactively resolve or escalate issues.
Executive Support
- Manage a busy diary, calls and inbox; prioritise requests; protect strategic focus time, ensuring timely responses to internal and external priorities.
- Advise the CEO on priorities, risks and interdependencies affecting the executive agenda.
-
Proactively check organisational policies, ensuring reviews are done to agreed dates
Make sure the CEO is fully prepared for each meeting visits, speaking engagements and external
commitments.
- Book UK and overseas travel, accommodation and itineraries; manage expenses claims.
- Draft and proof short updates, emails and letters for internal and external audiences.
- With People Advisor, coordinate all‑staff events (e.g. away days, team briefings): logistics, agendas,
speakers, materials and follow‑up notes.
- Provide the end-to-end support to the new Development Board (major donor advisory/engagement forum) as for Board committees: scheduling, agendas, papers, logistics and follow-up.
Programme Support
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Support project‑based work, demonstrating confidence and willingness to engage with planning, timelines, action lists and cross‑team delivery
- Provide project support to Fundraising & Communications with the delivery of supporter events (e.g.
talks, supporter gatherings): e.g. venue, materials, on‑the‑day support and
post‑event follow‑up.
-
Support consistent use of agreed templates, tools and file structures (SharePoint/Teams/Planner) across the organisation so project information is accessible, up to date and easy to
navigate.
- Prepare concise project status updates and dashboards for the CEO, Senior Leadership Team and Board, as required.
- Support the CEO and Director of Shared Services to drive delivery across projects by monitoring actions, milestones and interdependencies.
- Identify cross‑programme risks and work with senior leads to resolve or escalate issues.
Success Milestones
3/6/12-month milestones
- Established as a calm, reliable and trusted team member aligned with organisational culture and supporting leadership effectiveness.
- The CEO diary is running smoothly.
- Meeting packs and minutes are delivered to expectation.
- Action lists are clear and up to date.
- Early governance risks or gaps are identified and escalated with clear recommendations.
- Trusted as a central coordination point between Trustees, CEO, senior leaders and key external stakeholders.
- The CEO has more time for priority work each week.
- Board administration and logistics delivered efficiently and effectively.
- Board papers and governance frameworks show improved consistency due to proactive coordination and influence across teams.
- Continues organisation‑wide systems are well embedded for meetings, papers, actions and project reporting.
- CEO and Programme support run at a consistently high standard with minimal reactive work needed.
- Board administration and logistics runs smoothly
- Governance systems (SharePoint/Teams/Planner) are fully embedded, with improved accessibility and compliance across the organisation.
- End-to-end- governance cycle fully owned, requiring minimal CEO intervention.
Ways of working and tools
- Keep simple checklists,
templates and filing so work is easy to find and repeat.
- Use Microsoft 365 (Outlook,
Teams, OneNote, SharePoint, PowerPoint, Excel) confidently; help colleagues
adopt straightforward processes.
- Act as systems owner for
governance‑related Microsoft 365 structures (SharePoint, Teams, Planner),
ensuring they remain fit for purpose.
- Lead colleagues in adopting
consistent governance workflows using digital tools.
Person specification
Essential – Experience, Knowledge and Qualifications
- Proven experience providing high-level support to a CEO or senior executive in a demanding role.
- Experience advising senior leaders on governance processes, regulatory expectations and best practice.
- Experience supporting Boards or committees, including agenda preparation, paper coordination, minute taking and
action tracking.
- Strong organisational skills with exceptional attention to detail, including the ability to manage multiple priorities and deadlines.
- Advanced proficiency in cloud-based Microsoft 365 (Outlook, Teams, OneNote, SharePoint, PowerPoint and Excel).
- Clear, professional written communication skills, with the ability to draft concise papers, updates and correspondence.
- Experience influencing others without line‑management authority to meet governance or reporting deadlines.
- Sound judgement and discretion when handling confidential, sensitive or reputationally important matters.
- Understanding of, or willingness to learn, charity governance and regulatory requirements, including trustee responsibilities.
Skills and Competencies
- Skilled in project support, planning, execution, within scope, time, and budget constraints
- Proactive planning and prioritisation, with the ability to anticipate issues and keep leaders focused on strategic priorities.
- Confident managing shared inboxes to maintain smooth communication flow.
- Proactive working style, able to anticipate needs and take action without waiting for instruction.
- Strong upward management skills, ensuring the CEO remains informed, prepared and protected from unnecessary workload pressures.
- Confidence coordinating organisation-wide activity and project support through light-touch PMO support, including project tracking and action chasing.
- Calm, credible stakeholder management skills, with the confidence to work closely with trustees, senior leaders and external partners.
- Strong attention to process, consistency and documentation without creating unnecessary bureaucracy.
- Strong influencing and negotiation skills to ensure timely delivery of papers, actions and updates from colleagues.
Tools & systems:
- Advanced user of Microsoft 365 (Teams, Outlook, SharePoint, OneDrive Planner)
- Project management technology
- GDPR and Cybersecurity Awareness
Desirable Experience
- Previous experience working in the charity, not-for-profit or public sector, or within a regulated
environment.
- Experience supporting cross-functional projects or organisational change initiatives.
- Experience contributing to governance improvements, process reforms or compliance enhancements.
Personal Qualities
- Highly organised, dependable and trustworthy, with a strong sense of personal accountability.
- Calm and resilient under pressure, with a practical, solution-focused approach.
- Professional, approachable and confident, able to build trust with trustees, colleagues and partners.
- Collaborative and service-oriented, with a strong sense of ownership and follow-through.
- Confident guiding or advising colleagues on governance expectations and best practice.
- Values-led, demonstrating integrity, discretion and respect, and aligned with the charity’s mission and ethos. ·
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Comfortable influencing senior stakeholders diplomatically and constructively.
- A self‑starter who takes ownership, staying one step ahead and spotting what needs to be done before being asked.
Role Requirements
- Commitment to the Christian mission, vision and values of the charity, either as a practising Christian or as someone supportive of and sympathetic to Embrace’s faith-based ethos.
- The role requires the post‑holder to participate in internal prayer meetings, reflective gatherings
and occasional acts of Christian fellowship that contribute to the
organisational culture and spiritual life of Embrace the Middle East.
- The post‑holder must have a reasonable understanding of Christian structures, traditions and practices, or a willingness to learn, in order to work effectively with the CEO, Trustees,
clergy, church partners and mission‑based stakeholders.
- This is a hybrid role, with a minimum requirement of one day per week working from the High Wycombe office. Flexibility will be required.
- Occasional UK travel is required to support the CEO and to attend external meetings or events as needed.
Benefits at Embrace the Middle East:
- To support every member of staff to work as effectively as possible, Embrace offers remote and flexible working arrangements. This includes flexi-time and home-working arrangements.
- Embrace’s flexi-time framework means that staff can vary, by agreement with their manager, their start and finish times, taking into account the needs of their work and personal
preference/circumstance. Staff are required to start work between 7:30am – 10:00am
and finish between 3:00pm – 6:00pm. Our core collaborative working hours are
between 10:00am to 3:00pm.
- Pension – option to join from day 1. Maximum employer contribution of 10%
- Holiday – 32 days, days made up of 24 personal leave days (including 1 day off for staff’s birthday) and 8 recognised public/bank holidays – rising to 33 days after 5 years’ service and
34 days after 10 years’ service, plus 3 days leave between Christmas and the
New Year
- Access to retail discount portal.
- Life Assurance – 3x salary.
- Employee Assistance Programme (confidential counselling, legal and financial advice) – available 24 /7, 365 days a year
- Training and development programme for all employees.
- Commitment to staff health & wellbeing. Probationary period: 6 months
The closing date for this vacancy is 5pm Thursday, 12th March2026. We
strongly encourage you to submit your application before this deadline.
Provisional interviews are scheduled for
Thursday 19 March and will take place on-site at the High Wycombe Patch Office.
Equality & Diversity Statement
Embrace the Middle East is an equal opportunity employer. In line with our recruitment policy, we are committed to attracting and selecting staff solely based on merit- skills, qualifications, and ability to perform- regardless of age, race, gender, disability, sexual orientation, religion, or socioeconomic background. Our recruitment process is structured, transparent, and designed to eliminate bias, ensuring that every candidate receives fair treatment and consideration. All job opportunities are advertised openly, and selection decisions are based on clear, pre-defined criteria and objective assessment methods. We stand by the values of dignity, fairness, and inclusion in all our communications and activities.
