To Do List: Everything

I first started my career as an administrative professional in 1998. I was in the dental field when a friend of mine, who worked in HR, thought I would be a good fit supporting the team in Ops, along with their VP for a brand new startup - an ASP in Redwood City (ooo yeah, right by Oracle and Excite@Home - that's like "big time" in the dot com era, right?). Before I knew it, I was supporting the head of Ops, Engineering, and Marketing, along with their teams. To top it all off, I helped manage facilities and the front desk and the company added a new title to my name, "Customer Visit Coordinator". We had a "CVC" - Customer Visit Center, and I owned everything under it. Meeting execs from Hitachi and other big companies was the highlight of my day. I honestly can't remember how many hats I wore at this rapidly growing startup. But I do remember one thing, I wasn't alone. With a little less than 500 team members, I had the support and friendship of an amazing team of EA's, about a dozen of us, some of whom I am still friends with to this day.   It was my first experience of learning what these individuals REALLY do - obsessively organized, thick skinned, loyal and discrete individuals who bring their execs peace of mind while working harder than they ever have in their entire life and putting on a brave face for the world.

Over the years, I moved on to several larger establishments in Silicon Valley - PG&E, Levi's, Bain & Co, apple to name a few, and the strength and dedication of the support team at these businesses were simply amazing. We were an army. We triaged and translated. We were psychologists and therapists, we were referees, psychics and ambassadors to the outside world. Our teams were so tight, unbreakable, and unshakable. We lived off of Advil and coffee. We have stories that are vaulted and because of our loyalty to our execs and the companies we supported, we will take these war stories to our graves. I honestly thought I'd never go back to a start-up environment. Until...

I moved to Colorado in 2019 and found Quantum Metric. Oh boy, a startup company - gritty, raw, honest, and CRAZY BUSY. I was so accustomed to having so much structure and direction for so many years, I knew if I went back to a start-up, I would be in the trenches - finding them, digging them, elevating them, burying them. My role, the Executive Business Partner to Mario Ciabarra, Founder & CEO.  He was a serial entrepreneur, who was a cross between your nerdiest friend and your corniest uncle. Granted I am only a year older than him, but his dad/corny uncle jokes actually do make me laugh - just don't tell him I said so. We got to talking at a local coffee shop and sure enough, his life on the business side needed some help so I told him how I could troubleshoot his problems before they became problems and align his priorities and objectives. I became employee #32 on Halloween night. Since then, it's always just been me and Mario, this small wolfpack and alliance that we created and I honestly don't know how we survived this long. But along the way, I convinced him that we needed more executive support within the company. Megan DePalma came along in November of last year. She has been a breath of fresh air and it's a relief to finally have a tribe again. On admin professionals day, I want to honor those that have made other lives easier while their own personal life is a mess, managed the information flow on all levels, played "bad cop" so you wouldn't have to, those who represent you and your brand to colleagues, clients, and other professionals. They are my partners in crime from Western Union, Insight, JC2 Ventures, Tapestry, Under Armour, Bain Capital, Google, The Home Depot, Mattel, Lululemon, American Airlines, Gamestop, UC Health, American Express Global...doing more planning and organizing than you will ever realize and is the glue for everything - thank you!

In case you are wondering, Mario did call me this morning to greet me - grateful for those who may have reminded him. He definitely makes a better CEO than an EBP.