The Financial Times - Happy to be Featured!
Being featured in the Financial Times today reinforced something I’ve been seeing firsthand for the past several years:
The conversation around AI and administrative work is not really about assistants.
It’s about workforce transformation.
Many companies are making rapid decisions around restructuring, support models, automation, and headcount without fully understanding:
- what great executive support actually does
- which functions are truly replaceable
- where human judgment still matters most
- how organizational inefficiency gets hidden inside “cost savings”
What concerns me most is not AI itself.
It’s the widening gap between professionals who are adapting strategically and those who were never given the opportunity, training, or visibility to evolve beyond transactional work.
The future will absolutely require fewer purely task-based roles.
But it will require MORE:
- strategic operators
- business partners
- project managers
- systems thinkers
- relationship managers
- highly adaptable support professionals
The assistants and administrative professionals who will thrive are the ones building:
business acumen
communication skills
operational leadership
AI fluency
cross-functional capability
And companies that continue viewing executive support as “calendar management” will likely struggle to retain high-level talent capable of driving leverage for executives and organizations.
One thing I continue telling both employers and professionals:
Focus on the work that requires human discernment, trust, context, communication, and judgment.
That’s where long-term value still lives.
Grateful to contribute to this important conversation in the Financial Times.
