The Calendar Group

Hiring guide

Family Office Executive Assistant

Senior administrative support inside a family office — where the calendar, the household, and the balance sheet meet.

Begin a search for this role(877) 404-5290

Compensation

$110,000–$170,000 base

Typical base compensation, major U.S. markets, 2026. Scope, travel, and household complexity move the range.

We advise on offer structure — schedule, housing, benefits, bonus — before every search. The right package is how great people stay.

A family office executive assistant works at an unusual intersection. The morning might involve board-meeting logistics for the family's foundation; the afternoon, wiring instructions to review with the controller, a grandchild's travel visa, and the insurance renewal on a property in another state. The role demands corporate-caliber administration applied to the affairs of a family rather than a company.

The best candidates carry both fluencies. They have supported senior executives — so the calendar discipline, meeting preparation, and correspondence standards are second nature — and they understand private wealth: working alongside accountants, attorneys, and household staff, handling documents whose confidentiality has legal weight, and serving family members whose styles differ sharply from one another.

Discretion in a family office is not a soft skill. This person will see the estate plan on the copier, the family disagreement in the meeting notes, and the numbers behind everything. We vet for the professional maturity to hold all of it — for years, across generations, without a single lapse.

What the role owns

  • Calendar, travel, and correspondence for family office principals and executives
  • Meeting preparation — agendas, materials, minutes, and follow-through
  • Document management for legal, tax, and investment matters
  • Liaison among family members, advisors, attorneys, and household staff
  • Expense processing, invoice routing, and coordination with the controller
  • Personal support for family members — appointments, gifting, logistics
  • Board and foundation meeting logistics, including governance calendars
  • Confidential filing systems and records for the office and the family

What great looks like

A great family office EA moves between registers without friction — precise with the estate attorney at ten, warm with the family matriarch at eleven, and firm with a vendor at noon.

Her document management is audit-ready; when the tax team asks for a 2019 agreement, it surfaces in minutes with the amendments attached.

She serves multiple family members with visible even-handedness, and no branch of the family suspects she favors another.

She flags the quiet conflicts — a scheduling collision between two principals, an advisor working around the process — before they become family matters.

Years in, she has become institutional memory: the person who knows why a decision was made in 2021 and where it is written down.

Interview questions worth asking

  1. 01

    Describe supporting multiple principals with competing demands. How did you set priorities when both said now?

  2. 02

    What is the most sensitive category of document you have managed, and what systems kept it controlled?

  3. 03

    Tell me about working with a family across generations — how did your approach differ between the founder and the grandchildren?

  4. 04

    Walk me through your role in a board or foundation meeting cycle, from scheduling through minutes and follow-up.

  5. 05

    An advisor asks you directly for information you are not sure they should have. What exactly do you say?

Questions

Hiring a family office executive assistant, answered.

How does this differ from a corporate executive assistant role?
The mechanics overlap — calendars, travel, meetings — but the context changes everything. A family office EA serves a family, not a reporting structure: multiple principals with equal claims, matters that mix personal and financial, and confidentiality that extends to the family's entire private life. There is no HR playbook and less anonymity. Strong corporate EAs can make the transition, but the temperament must be screened deliberately.
How is this different from a personal assistant?
Setting and substance. A personal assistant is anchored to a principal's daily life — home, errands, travel, family logistics. A family office EA is anchored to the office: governance calendars, advisor coordination, legal and financial documents, with personal support woven in. The family office role is more administrative and less domestic. Larger operations employ both, and the two coordinate constantly.
What background should we prioritize?
Look for senior EA experience supporting C-level executives or partners — the administrative standards are non-negotiable — ideally with exposure to wealth management, law, private equity, or an existing family office. Familiarity with trust and estate vocabulary, wire procedures, and board governance shortens the ramp considerably. Beyond the résumé, prioritize evidence of long tenure and references who describe discretion in specifics, not generalities.
Should the role sit in the office or with the family?
Define it before the search, because the ambiguity burns people out. Some families want a pure office role with business hours; others want the EA reachable for personal matters at the margins. Both models work when they are explicit and compensated accordingly. What fails is the office-hours hire who discovers the real job includes Saturday texts from three family members. We help you write the honest version of the role.

Begin

Looking for a family office executive assistant?

Tell us about the household and the role. A senior advisor — not a coordinator — will come back to you within one business day.

Held in confidence. No obligation.