Latest posts
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Kelly Collins New Hampshire | Decision Support: What It Means to Brief an Executive Well
Briefing an executive well is not the same as summarizing information for them. A summary delivers content. A brief delivers content organized around a specific purpose — a decision, a conversation, a meeting, a commitment that needs to be honored. The structure and depth of a brief should be shaped by what the executive needs…
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Kelly Collins New Hampshire | Why Operational Systems Matter More Than Individual Effort
Individual effort has a ceiling. No matter how capable or attentive an executive assistant is, if the work relies on personal memory and manual execution for everything that recurs, the system is fragile. One bad week, one competing priority, one hand-off to a coverage person — and things fall through. Operational systems are what turn…
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Kelly Collins New Hampshire | Drafting in Someone Else’s Voice: The Art of Executive Communication
Writing in someone else’s voice is one of the less discussed skills in executive support, but it is one of the more demanding ones. When an executive assistant drafts a communication that will go out under the executive’s name, the output cannot sound like the assistant. It needs to sound like the executive — their…
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Kelly Collins New Hampshire | Anticipatory Support: Reading What an Executive Needs Before They Ask
The most useful thing an executive assistant does is rarely visible in the moment it happens. It is the meeting that did not get scheduled over a standing conflict, the briefing that arrived before the executive thought to ask for it, the follow-up that was drafted and ready before the call ended. Anticipatory support is…
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Kelly Collins New Hampshire | Building Culture Whether You’re in a School or a Boardroom
Culture is one of those organizational concepts that gets discussed in abstract terms until something goes wrong. Then it becomes very concrete. A team that doesn’t trust each other, a workplace where people are afraid to flag problems, a communication style that leaves people feeling managed rather than respected: all of that is culture, and…
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Kelly Collins New Hampshire | What Cross-Functional Collaboration Looks Like from the EA Chair
There’s a common misunderstanding about what a C-Suite Executive Assistant actually does. The job sounds like scheduling and communication management. In practice, it’s one of the most cross-functional roles in any organization. The EA chair sits at the intersection of every department, every initiative, and every relationship the executive has, and the person in that…
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Kelly Collins New Hampshire | Why Confidential Executive Support Is Harder Than It Sounds
Confidentiality in executive support looks straightforward in a job description. You handle sensitive information with discretion. You don’t discuss internal matters outside the appropriate channels. You treat private communications as private. Simple enough, on paper. In practice, the challenge is not the obvious moments. Most people can keep a secret they were explicitly told to…
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Kelly Collins New Hampshire | From Principal to Executive Assistant: The Skills That Actually Transfer
People hear “former school principal” and picture someone who knows how to run assemblies and manage lunch duty. Kelly Collins New Hampshire did both of those things. She also spent two decades managing budgets, personnel, facilities crises, legal compliance, board relationships, and the daily operational reality of keeping a large institution running while the people…
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Kelly Collins New Hampshire | What Emotional Intelligence Looks Like in Corporate Support
Emotional intelligence is one of those phrases that gets used so often it starts to lose meaning. But in the context of executive support, it describes something specific and operational. It’s the ability to read what a person needs, in the moment, without being told, and respond in a way that moves things forward rather…
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Kelly Collins New Hampshire | The Real Work Behind Managing a Senior Executive’s Calendar
A senior executive’s calendar is not a to-do list with time blocks. It’s a living operational document that reflects priorities, signals relationships, creates commitments, and tells the entire organization something about how the person at the top spends their time. Managing it badly has consequences that extend well beyond a missed meeting. Kelly Collins New…