Judgment you can lean on
Sound calls, good instincts, and complete discretion. Confidential by default, and still the person you actually want to think out loud with.
Executive Assistant · Right hand · Trusted thought partner
Your life doesn't come second.
Let me guess: your calendar is running you, your inbox has opinions, and the decision you meant to make on Tuesday is still waiting on Friday.
I'm Clarisse, the French form of Clarissa, from the Latin clarus: light, clarity. Fitting, because that's the job. I'm a senior executive assistant with 4+ years at the side of founders, carrying chief-of-staff responsibilities along the way. An everyday Claude user, AI enthusiast and quiet admirer of a good automation, but human-first, always. I see the vision, and I see the person carrying it. I think in systems, I work well with people, and I make the leader in front of me stronger.
SaaS founders
Philanthropy & boards
US ↔ PH time zones
Founder's Tuesday · PHT
A defragged day
Focus time2h 30m
Context switches3
Family dinnerProtected
FocusMeetingLifeConflict
Illustrative, but you've lived the Before. Tap to compare.
Top 0.5%Selected into Athena's EA program
4+ yearsSenior EA with chief-of-staff responsibilities
75+ nonprofitsGrantee relationships managed for a $20–25M/year fund
25+ Claude skillsDesigned and run on my own desk
Cainta, Rizal, Philippines · working US hours
Off the clockFive dogs, a book on the go, and the next island already on my list.
What I bring to the table
The human in the loop your systems are missing.
You probably have plenty of tools. What's missing is the person who designs the system, runs it every day, and knows exactly when to overrule it.
Leadership without the title
I manage up, across and down: saying the thing nobody else will (kindly, on time), aligning team leads, running proxy meetings, and hiring, onboarding and supervising support staff.
Systems thinking
I design the systems I run: operating rhythms, trackers, handover handbooks, and an ecosystem of 25+ custom Claude skills built for real executive work.
AI enthusiast, human-first
I use AI every day and hand it only what I understand. Hard guardrails on what it touches, and nothing with your name on it leaves without my review.
Human in the loop, in practice
Where AI helps, and where I stay in charge
AI's shareMine
From a letter of recommendation
It was a joy to work with Clarisse. My colleagues and friends knew her as responsive, polite, and very capable. She is an enthusiastic learner and is willing to adapt her skills and strategy to any given situation. When we had a lot of work in front of us, she assured me that we would be ready and could get the work finished, and we always did.Founder & philanthropistNew York · principal, 2022 to 2024
Thought partnership
In the room as a thought partner, not a note-taker.
Board meetings, CEO search committees, leadership syncs, funder strategy sessions. I've sat in the rooms where decisions get made, and the part that decides how they go happens before anyone sits down.
The meeting cycle I run
Two weeks out
Agenda built from open loops and last meeting's actions. Owners confirmed, pre-reads requested, and the room booked across time zones.
Decision briefExample
Every decision reaches you like this
ContextWhat happened, what it affects, and by when.
OptionsTwo or three real ones, with the trade-offs.
My recommendationThe one I'd pick, and why.
What I needA yes, a no, or ten minutes. Never an open question.
Thought partner & board support
Agendas, pre-reads, briefings and minutes for boards, committees and leadership teams.
Founder & C-suite support
Calendar, inbox in your voice, approvals, proxy meetings, conferences and travel across time zones.
Personal & life management
Homes and vendors, family travel, milestones, gifts and the reservation you forgot. Life doesn't come second.
Operations & AI systems
Operating rhythms, SOPs, trackers and AI workflows, with a human checking the work.
Stakeholders & relationships
Investors, partners, donors, boards and vendors. Requests triaged, replies in your voice, and events that make people feel remembered.
Delegation level
Most assistants wait for tasks. I work at levels 4 and 5.
Great delegation has five levels, from handing over single tasks to handing over whole goals. At the top, you stop assigning and start approving. Tap a level to see what it looks like with me.
Getting started
Your first two weeks, already planned
Delegation usually fails in week one, not month six. Nobody agrees on what's being handed over, so nothing really is. Here's how we start instead.
- Kickoff callThe role, your expectations, your tools, and the hours we overlap.
- Your Client User ManualA living doc of how you like to work: what I decide, what I draft, and what always comes to you.
- Three launch projectsYour top three priorities become the first things I own, end to end.
Client User Manualv1
How we work together
Decisions I bring youwith a recommendation
Access & approvalsby email, in writing
New tasks from callslogged the same day
Protected timefamily, faith, deep work
Launch project 01inbox reset
Selected work
Two very different desks. One way of working.
First a philanthropist whose every email carried weight, then a SaaS founder who moves fast. Client names stay private (that's part of the job, too).
SaaS
Founder & CEO, Inc. 5000 SaaS company
It started with conferences and travel across the US and Asia. Today it's a fast-moving product team with AI briefs, Monday boards and Slack doing the tracking. My job is to make sure what was said in the meeting actually lands in the record, and that my principal walks into every decision with the context already on the table.
Operations · 2026
Human-in-the-Loop Communication Playbook
How an EA works alongside AI daily briefs: catching untracked commitments, tasks trending overdue, and the founder's own open loops. Now piloting with team leads.
3 loops, checked daily
Claude skill
The Accountability Checker
Compares what people said in meetings with what Monday.com and Slack show, then drafts a warm nudge for each gap, with the evidence linked.
One card per person, weekly
Role design
Role & Operating Rhythm
One living reference for every function of the role and its daily, weekly, monthly and seasonal rhythm, so founder and EA share the same picture of scope.
11 functions mapped
Leadership comms
Weekly sync minutes & team update
Attend the leadership meeting, write the minutes, route action items to the tracker, then turn it all into the weekly update for the whole team.
Minutes out the same day
Founder visibility
Conferences, travel & podcasts
Registrations, flights, hotels and schedules across US and Asia time zones, plus pitching my principal and a co-guest to podcasts, from first email to air date.
On the road, on the record
Finance & vendors
Approvals & vendor admin
Route every spend request to the owners with context and precedent, confirm invoices and renewals, and manage contractor agreements through Deel.
Decided fast, in writing
Philanthropy
Founder & philanthropist, New York
Right hand to a painter and philanthropist running a $20–25M/year donor-advised fund, several board roles, gallery shows, four properties and a full family life. Often ten or more project lines at once, all of them personal to someone.
“You have been a wonderful assistant to me. A real team player and partner. You brought me to another level and I could not have done any of my shows without you. That's a fact.”Founder & philanthropist, New YorkFarewell note
“Clarisse consistently demonstrates initiative and ownership when managing tasks for the client.”Athena performance reviewAccount manager, 2024
Grantmaking
75+ nonprofit relationships
Prioritized every funding request, drafted replies in my principal's voice, and tracked each decision until the loop closed, across grantees, regranting partners and advisors.
$20–25M/year in grants
Grants data
Grants data integration
Standardized grant records and loaded them into the CRM, giving one real-time view of allocations against the fund's framework.
150+ records unified
Art · Exhibition
A solo gallery show in New York
Designed the artist's website, retouched and uploaded the artworks, wrote the bio and press material, built the list of works and pricing, and tracked sales and deliveries.
100+ images retouched
Events
Annual fundraising galas
Designed the invitation and thank-you cards, managed guest lists and RSVPs, and tracked every donation and its non-deductible portion with the finance team.
Every year, end to end
Personal assistance
Home, travel & family life
Four properties and their vendors, family trips down to the passports, and 25+ gifts every holiday season, each one picked for the person, not the list.
Life, handled quietly
Continuity
EA Role Handover & Operations Handbook
A principal's whole world in one handbook: people and tone tiers, daily-to-seasonal rhythms, inbox rules, travel preferences, and where every system of record lives.
31 pages, day-one ready
Experience
Four years beside founders
Selected through one of the most competitive EA pipelines in the industry, then trusted with a little more every year.
Tools I work in
My brainstill the main tool. Everything else plugs into it.
Claude & CoworkGeminiGoogle WorkspaceMonday.comSlackTrelloFirefliesDeel1PasswordSquarespaceMailchimpCanvaMiroFileMaker
- Executive Assistant to Founder & CEO
Inc. 5000 SaaS company
Calendar, inbox and approvals; conferences and travel; leadership minutes and weekly team updates; vendor and contractor management; podcast guest pitching; human-in-the-loop operations across teams.
- Executive Assistant to Founder & Philanthropist
Private philanthropy · New York · via Athena
Operations for a $20–25M/year donor-advised fund and 75+ nonprofit relationships, plus board and search-committee support, gallery shows, events, four properties, travel and family life.
- Selected into Athena's EA program
Athena
Top 0.5% acceptance, after cognitive testing and hands-on training.
Freelance writing and design, where I learned to write in someone else's voice.
Certifications
Still learning, mostly in AI these days
Six AI certificates this year, from Anthropic and Google. Not for the badges. So that the AI I bring to your desk is the useful kind.
Google New
AI for Research and Insights
Google New
AI for Brainstorming and Planning
Google New
AI Fundamentals
Anthropic New
AI Fluency: Framework & Foundations
Anthropic New
Introduction to Claude Cowork
Anthropic New
Claude 101
Earlier certifications (8)
Udemy
The Complete Graphic Design Theory for Beginners
Udemy
Canva Master Course
MTF Institute
Professional Diploma in Copywriting and Business Writing
MTF Institute
Executive Diploma in Operations Management
Google · Coursera
Foundations of Project Management
Macquarie University · Coursera
Excel Skills for Business: Essentials
Coursera
Asana for Project Management
Coursera
RACI Charts (guided project)
A few moments
What it looks like when it matters
Anyone can list skills. Here are a few real moments instead, with the names left out on purpose.
Judgment
The grant I paused
A request came in for a sizeable discretionary grant to a school that had already received its standard gift that year. I could have just processed it. Instead I flagged the discrepancy and asked whether the philanthropic advisor should weigh in first, given the amount. Then I followed my principal's call.
Say it early, say it kindly, then respect the decision.
Anticipation
The gift nobody had asked for yet
I had just produced a birthday photobook for my principal's son. His younger brother's birthday was coming, and I knew the same wish would follow. So I revisited how we'd made the first one, broke it into steps, and had the plan ready before anyone asked.
The best request is the one that's already handled.
Under pressure
The gallery-show crunch
Weeks before a solo painting show, the gallery needed a mountain of work from my principal. I took it: 100+ images retouched and uploaded, a new website, the bio and press material, the list of works and pricing. My principal got to spend those weeks in the studio.
“I was ready for my show because of her expertise and encouragement.”My principal, in a letter of recommendation
Know the drill
The card that kept going missing
Every principal has a thing. For one of mine, it was a credit card with a talent for disappearing. By the second time, I had a runbook: freeze it, order the replacement, update every autopay and subscription on file, and flag which bills would bounce before they did.
Once is a surprise. Twice is a process.
Ready to delegate?
Get your time and peace of mind back.
Tell me what's eating your week. I'll tell you how I'd take it off your plate, and what you'd get back first.
Clarisse