Monica Howse

I would attribute my success to my Christian background, my faith, and my belief. Definitely, I would attribute it to my parents. My father was a pastor for many years, and both of them are deceased at this time. But the fact that my father was a pastor for that many years, he threw us into every role and taught us to serve. I feel like I'm administrative at heart and always in a support role, and I attribute that to the upbringing from my father. He put us in every role in the church, whether it was singing, whether it was cooking in the kitchen, ushering, or hosting. I come from a background of a family that sings and plays - my brothers play almost every instrument, and we all sing. I attribute a lot of it to my upbringing, being a PK, and my father putting us in those roles to serve. We learned at an early age what it was to serve and help people, and I feel like that's who I am. I'm always in a support role.

The best career advice I've ever received is that if you're passionate about what you do, you'll do a good job at it and you'll be successful. But if you're just doing it for the money, you won't be as successful. When you're passionate about what you do, you'll do the job well. I've been told that if you're only doing it for the money or other reasons, then you're not going to be as successful. But when you have that passion for your work, that's when you truly excel.

I would say start early, education-wise, because I didn't. I didn't start early. Actually, I took a career shift - I thought I was going to be doing hair, doing cosmetology, because I took that in high school, but there was a career shift. I wish I had gotten the background in the schooling early in life. I would say schooling is important, but I would also say find you a mentor, somebody that's already in that industry, and link up with people that can help you. Education is going to help you, but that mentor's going to help you too. Network with people in that field - not just a mentor, but network with other EAs, executive assistants, secretaries, and just people that can help and that understand the industry.

I would say that I feel like sometimes the people that we support only view us in a certain light and they don't realize that without us, the EAs are the backbone of the company. Sometimes we have a pulse on the company, sometimes more than they have a pulse on the company. It takes a true EA, but I think they just don't value EAs like they should. They don't realize that if it were not for EAs, things wouldn't run smoothly. Sometimes they walk into a board meeting or walk into a meeting and everything is done, it's smooth, the meeting runs smooth, but had it not been for the EA that worked all the logistics, it wouldn't be that way. So I think sometimes EAs are just viewed as, like, a person to make copies, answer phones, but they don't realize that it's more than that.

Collaboration, feeling valued, being viewed as a partner, and work-life balance.