At Odetta, we work from a different continent than where most of our clients are based. Even our founder lives overseas. This makes having effective, organized communication channels a basic need. Enter Odetta’s Virtual Assistant team. They make sure everyone is kept in the loop, minimize delays, and help the management team with their tasks, essentially making them the backbone of our company.

So we decided to sit down with Misha Nadeem, one of our own Virtual Assistants, to ask her about her experience.

1. Tell us who you are and what you do?

My name is Misha and I work as a virtual assistant (VA) for Katharine Wolf, the founder of Odetta. I’ve been a VA for over two years. I am also currently pursuing a Master's in Electrical Engineering in Pakistan.

2. How did you become a Virtual Assistant?

I was approached in the summer of 2019 for this role by Hafsa, the first-ever VA in Odetta. I was already intrigued by the job and after learning about the duties and getting the appropriate training, I officially joined her team.

3. What are your everyday duties?

My role is kind of like a Chief of Staff or Logistics, where I support our CEO to help the company function, primarily as an operator or delegator of work. I also coordinate groups of people’s schedules according to the priorities of our business.

I have two separate lines of duties: tasks that are Katharine-related and things that are more management-related. So, for Katharine I do things like:

Keeping her calendar organized
Preparing the weekly salesview
Scheduling meetings and calls with clients and our internal teams
Managing her inbox

In terms of management-related tasks, I do things like:

Streamlining account management

Recording our sales outreach responses
Following up with clients after project submissions
Posting work updates on Slack

4. How do you set up Katharine's inbox?

With all the work happening at Odetta, I think it’s safe to say Katharine’s inbox is the busiest account here. Setting up her inbox is fairly tricky but also equally interesting, mostly because it gives me so much insight into how things work around the company.

Luckily, we have an amazing group of people working at Odetta, taking care of all the client work, but all escalations and legal matters must be flagged for her to intervene or at least take note of. And while she takes care of personal emails, anything that comes in for the company, I handle to the best of my abilities- be it scheduling calls, introducing the company, introducing the teams, or even connecting new projects to relevant teams. It requires the VA team to be around for the most part of the day as we never want to keep our clients waiting.

5. What do you think are your top skills that help you do this job?

Firstly, attention to detail. I have little to no space for making mistakes. Second, being able to organize things efficiently. This is particularly important because we have clients/teams in different time zones. So, our team always tries to stay on top of things. Lastly, good communication skills- our work comes with a lot of interactions with people at every level of management.

6. What is the best thing about this job?

I get to learn so much every day, both just from Katharine but from our clients and Odettians alike. Every new day brings new challenges which I love!

What Makes a Great Virtual Assistant?