Executive Assistant to the CEO

Full-Time role in Doylestown, PA

Compensation range: $65,000 - $100,000 + Equity

At Ello, our mission is to maximize the potential of all children. Our first product, Read with Ello, is an AI reading teacher that listens to children read out loud. Ello uses speech recognition to help them when they get stuck, creates stories using generative AI, and inspires a love for reading.

We’re now building on the success of Read with Ello and putting together the pieces of the world’s first complete AI teacher for all children. Together, we believe we can close the primary school education gap worldwide.

Ello has been recognized on Fortune’s “Change the World” and Time’s 2024 Best Inventions lists. We are well-funded, backed by world-class investors, and ready to recruit new talent to help us achieve our vision.

About the Role

You will be the Executive Assistant (EA) to Ello’s Co-Founder and CEO,  Tom Sayer (see bio below), working in-person in Doylestown, PA. To support Tom, we are looking for a creative, resourceful administrator and project manager who is a strong communicator, detail-oriented, and has an intrinsic drive to create order out of chaos.  The ideal candidate will be comfortable wearing many hats and supporting other business functions as needed given our small team. This is an exciting opportunity to work in a Silicon Valley startup environment while in Bucks County, PA.

Responsibilities:

• Inbox Triage and Communication: Take charge of the CEO’s inbox by triaging emails, crafting thoughtful responses, and ensuring nothing falls through the cracks. Your communication will set the tone for key relationships.

• External Stakeholder Management: Be the CEO’s go-to for scheduling and managing interactions with investors, partners, and other high-profile stakeholders.

• Administrative Support: Manage travel arrangements, expense reporting, and other day-to-day administrative tasks.

• Meeting preparation and follow-up: Prepare compelling agendas, curate materials, provide insightful pre-briefings, and follow up on action items to maximize the value of every meeting.

• Cross-Functional Support: Support critical functions across finance, marketing, HR, and other teams with tasks such as influencer recruitment, payroll processing, and financial reporting.

• Special Projects: Own and execute high-impact initiatives such as grant applications, PR submissions, and other projects that move the business forward.

We will look for candidates who can demonstrate

• An owner’s mindset: You’re a results-oriented self-starter who knows how to get stuff done. You’re highly organized and can multitask and manage multiple projects simultaneously. You pursue opportunities with a relentless enthusiasm to over-deliver on expectations. 

• Startup hustle: You thrive working in a fast-paced, dynamic environment, and you’re comfortable with change and ambiguity. You balance exceptional attention to detail with the courage to move fast. If you get stuck, you demonstrate a bias towards action – you pick up the phone (so to speak) and figure out how to get unstuck.   

• Speed of learning: You like to learn and you learn quickly. The idea of being asked to learn new software tools you have no previous experience with excites you.

• Strong communication and interpersonal skills: You can draft concise emails, and you won’t hesitate to make or answer calls on Ello’s behalf. You’re comfortable representing Ello outwardly. We can expect you to respond to top executives and Ello’s customers alike with eloquence and empathy.

• Teamwork and integrity: You have a low ego, give and receive feedback well, and prefer open and honest communication that is grounded in empathy. You love collaborating with cross-functional, multicultural teams. Other people describe you as enthusiastic, kind, and extremely trustworthy. 

• An interest in the mission of Ello: You are excited to work hard on Ello’s mission. Education doesn’t need to be your passion, but doing work that improves lives is.

Must Have

• 2+ years of experience either managing the administrative needs of an executive or equivalent experience in program management and coordination. 

• Some demonstration of the ability to work in a fast-paced, high-performance environment.

• Extensive experience using office software and modern administrative tools such as Notion, Google Suite, Microsoft Office Suite, and Slack.

Nice to Have

• Experience supporting other business functions, including recruiting, HR, sales, marketing, customer support, quality assurance, or accounting

• Bachelor’s degree

Here are some reasons to join us

• Work directly with the co-founder and CEO of a cutting-edge technology startup at the intersection of AI and learning design.

• Do work that matters and make a true impact on child development and literacy at scale.

• Be part of a rapidly growing yet tight-knit team working at the forefront of technological change.

• Capitalize on tremendous career development opportunities during this exciting early phase.

Compensation and Benefits

$65,000 - $100,000 base salary per year plus stock options, full health care coverage, and 36 days of paid time off (including holidays).

About Tom Sayer (Co-Founder & CEO)

Before Ello, Tom was the head of impact and adoption programs at Google for Education, where his team was responsible for ensuring that Google tools were used effectively in classrooms worldwide. He was also on the board of GO Public schools, an organization dedicated to giving voice to families in the most underserved communities, and on the advisory board of Education Reimagined, the movement builder of learner-centered education. He has worked as an intelligence officer, a product manager, founded an EdTech company, and has built a mini-golf course in Cambodia. 

Tom graduated from Cambridge University with first-class honors in maths and psychology and has an MBA and MA (Education) from Stanford. He has won the Lamor prize at Cambridge, the Queen’s medal at Sandhurst, the Intelligence top student award, and was a Siebel Scholar at the GSB. He loves running, rugby, and lives with his wife and two children in Doylestown.

About Us

Ello is a public benefit corporation on a mission to maximize the potential of all children. We’re currently around ~40 people, headquartered in San Francisco, with offices in São Paulo, Brazil; Nairobi, Kenya; and New York.

Our team has deep expertise in artificial intelligence, K-12 education, and child development across institutions such as Stanford, Berkeley, Google, Apple, and more. We were part of Y Combinator’s W20 batch and are funded by world-class investors including Goodwater Capital, Homebrew, Reed Hastings, Common Sense Growth, Ravensburger, Project A Ventures, Reach Capital, Khosla Ventures, WndrCo, Visible Ventures, and K9 Ventures.

We’re a small, collaborative team that takes each other’s voices very seriously. Because our mission is to support all children, it is critical that our team is representative of the communities we work in; we place significant emphasis on ensuring diversity in our team and inclusion in our culture.

We feel enormously privileged to be one of the few companies that has the opportunity to take a shot at truly revolutionizing education with AI at this inflection point in technology. We don’t take it for granted, so we work quite hard to turn that vision into reality with urgency. We want to create an environment in which we can all be our best selves, use our strengths to take Ello forward and develop our own skills. We want to have fun while working hard to do impactful things that we’re proud of – and we believe it’s possible to do both.

At Ello, we view diversity as a moral imperative and a competitive advantage. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, skin color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. We plan and structure our interviews to directly assess skills and experience. If you need any accommodations throughout the interview process, please reach out to jackie@ello.com.

Compensation Range: $65K - $100K