If you ask a room of senior Executive Assistants in private equity how they got to where they are, you’ll hear a real mix of stories. Plenty started out on a front desk, some came in as temps covering a couple of weeks’ holiday and were asked to stay, and others joined from executive search, law firms or hospitality before finding their way into the sector.

What connects these careers isn’t a fixed number of years in each role. In our experience, people progress because they take on more than their job description asks of them, build trust with the people they support, and find a firm that recognises the size of the job they’re doing rather than the title attached to it. We’ve watched that play out across London, New York and Europe since 2010, so we wanted to set out what the path looks like today.

Starting out on the front desk

Reception was once seen as a short stop on the way to something else, but that view has shifted a lot in the past few years. As firms invest in better office spaces and encourage people back in person, front of house has become one of the main ways clients and employees experience a business, which is why you’ll now see titles like Client Experience and Workspace Team alongside Receptionist.

It’s also one of the most visible roles in the building. As a Receptionist, you’re the first person everyone sees when they walk into the office, from the firm’s own partners to clients, investors, CEOs and business leaders arriving for meetings. Few early-career roles put you in front of so many senior stakeholders every day, and the relationships and network you build there are a real advantage on the road to becoming an EA.

The day-to-day has grown too. Alongside welcoming visitors, Receptionists are managing meeting rooms, helping with facilities projects, coordinating internal events and picking up overflow EA work when a team is stretched. Anyone who can keep a partner’s visitors, a catering order and a last-minute boardroom change running smoothly is already developing the judgement a good EA relies on. From reception, most people head either into an EA role or into Front-of-House Management, which often leads on to Office Management and wider workplace roles.

What “EA” means now

This is where progression becomes harder to read from the outside. Many firms have simplified their structures, so Team Assistant and PA titles have largely been replaced by EA at every level, with seniority set out in internal competency frameworks and salary bands instead.

Broadly, we see three stages. Earlier in their careers, EAs usually have one to five years in a fast-paced sector and support a wider group with diaries, travel, expenses and events. With five to ten years behind them, they tend to support a handful of senior executives while coaching junior colleagues and leading internal projects. The most established EAs work as a trusted right hand to senior leadership, often one-to-one, with people, project and event management as part of the role.

What’s striking is how few EA roles are now limited to diaries, expenses and travel. Almost every EA we speak to is involved in something beyond that, whether it’s project work, event planning, investor relations, operations, process improvement or helping roll out AI tools across the team. Junior EAs and Administrative Assistants in particular are eager to take ownership of projects and support the team wherever they can, and many are actively looking for roles that let them contribute beyond the administrative side of the job.

Because one title can cover such different jobs, we give firms and candidates the same advice: price the remit, not the title.

Closer to the deal

One of the clearest shifts we’re seeing is that deal teams and Investor Relations teams are asking for more senior support professionals, and the appetite is just as strong from candidates. Many senior EAs are choosing to stay in these teams or actively looking to move into them, because they enjoy being closer to the business, feeling like a genuine part of the team and seeing the impact of their work on the firm’s success. It’s a real change from a few years ago, when supporting a deal team was often seen as a stepping stone to a one-to-one role with a senior partner.

How AI fits in

Technology is changing every stage of this path, though not quite in the way the headlines suggest. As AI tools take on more of the transactional work, EAs have more time for higher-quality output and for projects they’d never have had capacity for before. They see so much of how a business runs that they’re often the first to notice a gap, and now they can do something about it far more quickly. The parts of the job that rely on emotional intelligence, discretion and real care for the people they support matter as much as they ever did.

It’s changed how we interview, too. We used to ask candidates whether they used AI tools; now we ask them to talk us through what they use and the difference it’s made. We’re also paying close attention to how comfortable people are with ambiguity, because firms want support professionals who’ll embrace change rather than wait for it to settle.

Where the path leads next

At the senior end, the options open up considerably. Some people move into EA Management, taking responsibility for allocating work, managing performance and developing an assistant team. Others specialise in Investor Relations, building towards roadshow coordination, where client-facing experience and discretion are especially valued. Workplace and operations leadership is another strong route, running from Office Manager through to Operations Manager and Head of Workplace Operations, and it’s the reason we’ve set up a dedicated Workplace Leadership desk.

We’re also seeing far more strategic support roles, although they aren’t always called Chief of Staff. Regardless of title, the responsibilities become much more strategic, with support professionals partnering closely with Founders, Partners and senior leaders on business initiatives.

Temping has become a route into all of this as well. Assignments now reach well beyond holiday cover into Investor Relations, project coordination and change support, and the rise in temp-to-perm moves gives candidates the chance to show what they can do while giving firms confidence in someone they’ve already seen perform.

No two paths look the same

If there’s one thing we’ve learned from the careers we’ve seen develop, it’s that no path into a senior role is linear, and no two are the same. What makes the difference is an individual’s willingness and ability to take on more projects and get involved in parts of the business beyond their core remit. That’s what tends to open the door to the outstanding progression opportunities in private equity, whether that means leading an assistant team, partnering with a Founder on strategy or running workplace operations across several offices.

If you’d like to talk through what the next step could look like for you or your team, our consultants in London, the US and Europe would love to hear from you.