A Celebrity Assistant’s Secrets to Success
A Celebrity Assistant’s Secrets to Success
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BONNIE LOW-KRAMEN is a TEDx speaker, bestselling author, and the founder and CEO of Ultimate Assistant Training. A celebrity assistant for 25 years to Oscar winning actress Olympia Dukakis, Bonnie is an award-winning speaker who empowers staff and executives alike to build ultimate partnerships that are both mutually respectful and highly profitable. She has taught in 13 countries and 38 states.
Her work was featured in a Forbes 2019 cover story and her “Be the Ultimate Assistant” workshop was named in the Top 7 Conferences to Attend since 2018. Dubbed “The Assistant Whisperer,” her book, Be the Ultimate Assistant, is considered a must-have resource for every assistant. Bonnie is passionately committed to ending workplace bullying and closing the wage gap as her way to build confident and courageous leaders of all genders in the world.
Recognized as one of the world’s most respected thought leaders in the administrative profession, Bonnie is a co-founder and former President of NYCA – New York Celebrity Assistants – a professional networking organization. She is on the Board of Private Service Alliance and an advisor to the World Administrators Alliance.
Her second book about the workplace is Staff Matters, People-Focused Solutions for the Ultimate New Workplace.
Bonnie is a popular guest on business podcasts and she is a writer for Harvard Business Review, Executive Support Magazine, Training Magazine, and the Ultimate Assistant blog. Her writing has been featured in the Huffington Post and she has been quoted in the Washington Post and New York Times.
Bonnie’s work with Olympia Dukakis included close involvement with the Academy Award win for Moonstruck, the 1988 presidential campaign of Michael Dukakis, and travel around the world to places such as Sydney, London, Alaska, and Prague.
A New Jersey native, Bonnie holds a B.A. degree from Rutgers University in English and Theatre. She worked in public relations and marketing for not-for-profit theatres in Chicago, Atlanta, and Houston before returning to New Jersey in 1986 where she became the Public Relations Director at Olympia Dukakis’ Whole Theatre in Montclair, NJ. The rest is history.
Bonnie lives in Ponte Vedra, Florida with her high school sweetheart and tech guru Robert Sanders.
Assistants can be a manager’s most powerful secret weapon. That’s why bringing both groups together for an interactive session has high positive impact. Managers will learn how to maximize effectiveness, productivity, and profitability by fully utilizing their assistant. Assistants will gain insights about taking their work to the next level for the benefit of their manager(s), themselves, and the company they represent.
Designed to build mutual respect and empathy, the goal of this training is to learn immediately actionable strategies to empower managers and assistants – for now and the future. Bringing these two groups together can change everything. Finally. Together at last.
Pulling off miracles — minor to major — has become the norm for the professional assistant of 2012 and beyond. You’ll get practical ideas on how to excel as an assistant and how to make the most out of your relationship with your employer. Bonnie Low-Kramen, former assistant to actors Olympia Dukakis and Louis Zorich for 25 years, will focus on what it takes to build a healthy, long-lasting, and mutually beneficial partnership.
Bonnie will share her experiences of creatively solving problems through risk-taking, exploring options, and collaborating with her employers. Her applicable and entertaining real-life examples will show the path to success — for both assistants and employers –is found by facing our fears and tolerating “puddles of discomfort” while proactively searching for solutions.
As assistants, we “learn by burn.” We save the day, not just on some days but every day. We quietly avert crises and pray that the pieces fall into place at the 23rd hour. The weeks fly and our To-Do list grows longer. Paralysis sets in. Sometimes it is hard to breathe or sleep from the weight of the responsibility. In a single day we can have enormous triumphs and plans that go horribly wrong. Somehow we move through it, learn by necessity and are stronger for it.
Bonnie Low-Kramen has experienced all of these things and so much more in a 25-year career working as the Personal Assistant to celebrity couple Olympia Dukakis and Louis Zorich. Her stories will resonate with every administrative professional as she relives the saga of 1988 when she coordinated Olympia’s life for her successful Academy Award campaign for “Moonstruck,” the Presidential race for cousin Michael Dukakis, and her own pregnancy with son Adam. Multitasking indeed and all without a cell phone or a computer which is unthinkable in today’s 24/7 instant access world.
Bonnie will share stories of life-changing moments that define a career. Solving complex problems and then moving right on to the next one with no time to stop. Making colossal mistakes, celebrating big successes, surviving personal crises, and making sense of the nonsensical – one situation at a time, one task at a time. Every admin understands the moments of epiphany when the clouds clear and the answers appear. These are the never to be forgotten lessons of a celebrity assistant.
What would you do if you weren’t afraid? Sheryl Sandberg, 43-year old COO of Facebook reports that this question is posted on everyone’s wall at Facebook. She encourages women to fight the fears borne in our socialization, speak your minds, and own your own success. Oprah Winfrey tells women to not let others define you or tell you what you can’t do. Martha Stewart urges us to turn off the tech to improve work-life balance. Sandberg, Winfrey, and Stewart are powerful women role-models who are sharing inspiring ideas and strategies that will empower women in the modern workplace.
Lessons to be learned and solutions to be explored, author and speaker Bonnie Low-Kramen is fascinated by the ideas that help women succeed and the issues that hold women back. She discusses the dynamics in play from her own 25-year career and that of her former employer Olympia Dukakis which apply to every administrative professional. Bonnie explores workplace issues and realistic solutions for women from the famous and not-so-famous women leaders in our world.
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