The Job That Few See

I can usually tell when someone is burning out before they can.

It's in the voice. A little flatter, a little quieter. Replies get shorter. Less checking in, less small talk. Saying yes to everything, which is almost always the last thing a person does before they stop being able to do anything at all.

I notice because noticing is my job.

I'm an Executive Assistant at The Just Trust, and when most people hear that, they picture calendars, board materials, travel, and lots of logistics. But that’s only part of the job. The other half that nobody writes down—and I'm sure my fellow EAs can attest to—is this: I am responsible for the conditions the work happens in.

I take that seriously, because I know exactly what happens when the conditions are wrong – and what needs to change so they can be right.

How I Got Here

In September 2020, a brain tumor diagnosis changed the trajectory of my life. After a seven hour craniotomy I woke up permanently deaf in my right ear, missing a balance nerve, and needing to relearn how to walk.

What most people don't know about single-sided deafness is that it isn't about volume. When you lose hearing in one ear, sound loses its direction. Everything arrives at the same level. The conversation, the background noise, the person three cubicles over. In an open office, that isn't an inconvenience. It's unworkable. Add chronic migraines and the picture gets clear fast.

But here's the part that took me longer to say out loud: I was still excellent at my job. The room was the problem.

I was born to be an Executive Assistant. I thrive in the chaos of administrative work, and none of that changed on an operating table. What changed is that I stopped believing the environment was a neutral thing that happened around my work. The environment was the work. Get the room wrong and a person who is built for something becomes a person who can't do it.

So I stopped trying to fit the room. I started doing fractional virtual executive assistant work, supporting organizations remotely on contract. Practical, sustainable, mine. That path is what eventually brought me to The Just Trust, and when they offered me a full-time seat I said yes without hesitating. I changed my conditions and I changed the room, so I could thrive. Now it was time to take that mentality and skill to an issue I care about, one that is deeply personal.

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Helping People Do Hard Things 

You know it’s funny because after all these years, it took a craniotomy to teach me to look at the room instead of just the person standing in it. I think about that constantly now, because this field almost never does. 

The rooms our criminal justice leaders are trying to lead from go largely unexamined. The six a.m. flights, the airport coffee shops, the hotel room between conference sessions. The executive director who is also the fundraiser, the spokesperson, the crisis manager, and the person answering a reporter at 10pm.

And when somebody starts to falter under all of that, we tend to treat it as something about them. A resilience problem. A boundary problem. A self-care problem they should go handle on their own time.

I've been on the receiving end of that logic. It's the wrong question. 

The work of criminal justice reform is slow and it is heavy. It asks people to stay committed to a future they may not live to see. Progress arrives in increments and setbacks arrive all at once. The people doing it carry an enormous amount.

Someone has to be paying attention when they can't afford to be.

This can look like noticing a leader has back-to-back travel with no buffer, and rebuilding the itinerary so there's a night to sleep in their own bed before the next flight — or so she makes it home for dinner instead of missing it again. It might mean booking a red-eye so she gets home for even a few hours to catch a kid’s game instead of another night in a hotel room. 

It can also look like a week booked solid from end to end, and going back in to find one hour where nothing is due. She never has to ask. Building in time for self care, time for friends and family, and intentional, curated workflows and travel schedules make all the difference in helping leaders and organizations operate at their full potential. And when that work impacts real people and families across the country it's not just burnout on the line – it’s people’s whole lives. 

None of that shows up in a strategic plan. All of it is the reason the strategic plan is still moving. Executive Assistants are not outside the work. We are inside the conditions that make the work possible.

Since joining The Just Trust and working more closely with leaders from across the justice reform space, I’ve noticed that we are very good, in this field, at talking about strategy and scale. We are not, however, nearly as good at talking about sustaining the humans executing it. And a movement that burns through its people doesn't get to have a long-term theory of change, because it won't have anyone left to run one.

What comes after this country's first 250 years isn't written yet. Somebody has to be well enough to write it. That's the part I work on.