Lara Dutton

Lara is such a great candidate; she is extremely personable and has some great experience particularly in the Property Sector. Lara is South African (now has a British passport) and started her career in Port Elizabeth before relocating to London in 2002. She initially worked for Chubb which gave her good office exposure in the UK, where she stayed for 5 years in an administrative position, before moving to Deloitte.

Lara absolutely loved working for Deloitte and was there for 7 years, her role was based within the Real Estate Development team and was incredibly varied. Along with traditional support duties such as diary management etc, she also assisted with billing for all fee earners and reported back every quarter. Lara then joined Derwent London – high end property developers on Savile Row.

Lara was with them for 8 years and she loved the Company, friendly culture, the team of five she supported and the role itself. Lara and her partner decided to relocate to Devon to be closer to her partner’s family and as such, she is now looking for a Secretary/Team Assistant/PA/Administrator role in Exeter. Her strengths lie with her experience of extensive administrative (detail orientated & accurate), good typist (65 wpm) & diary management skills.

WORK EXPERIENCE

03/2015 to 03/2023 Team Assistant Derwent London, London, United Kingdom

Key responsibilities

Extensive administration & secretarial support for 5 x Senior Colleagues

• Complex diary management including large design reviews with Architects, scheduling a high volume of internal and external meetings in an ever-changing environment
• Review diaries frequently and initiate regular catch ups to prioritise tasks in progress and plan for the week ahead
• Assisting team with formatting of monthly reports/documents and typing of general correspondence including the preparation of papers and other documents for meetings and visits
• Processing expense claims and corporate hospitality and gift claim forms
• Raising cheque/BACS requests
• Production of presentation slides on InDesign 
• A good team player, working collaboratively with other secretaries and providing cover where necessary
• To ensure electronic filing is kept up to date and stored accordingly 
• Booking travel, taxi’s and couriers

08/2007 – 03/2015 Executive Assistant, Deloitte LLP, London, United Kingdom

Key responsibilities

Extensive administration & Executive Assistant support for Partners, Directors, Managers /Team of 16

• Co-ordinating diaries, booking restaurants, travel and flights
• Managing the team's fee billing process including the preparation of accurate and timely invoices for clients
•  Assisting with the quarterly allowance reviews
•  Coding up of sub-consultant invoices & expenses
•  Providing time & expense reports, changing NBRs, billing adjustments
•  Update of client data – Relationship/ Reports Formatting documents / Proposals/ Tenders 
•  Updating Fee forecast
•  Static reports/ exporting documents/report
•  Formatting presentations, documents and reports with Word and PowerPoint
•  Template formatting – PS2 / Tuxedoin input (web)
•  Mail merge / Scanning / Post / Subscriptions/ Memberships
•  Research using firm's databases & other publications

08/2002 – 07/2007 Regional Administrator Chubb Security, London, United Kingdom   

Key responsibilities

• Providing Administration support to large security London Branch ensuring strictest confidentiality
• Setting up, processing and tracking of all new business and terminations for existing business
• Collating weekly activity report and quotes database report
• Maintaining the electronic files in precise location on the usershare
• Assisting customer, Accounts Department and Credit control Department with Service Centre queries via email, telephonically or written correspondence if required
• Raising credit note requests for the Accounts Department and having authority within the Service Centre to sign off these credits at my own discretion
• Assisting in proof reading/rectifying proposals typed by other staff members i.e. sales & surveyor
• Assisting in audits
• Assisting other Regional Bus Manager’s with admin support in their Regional Administrator’s absence
• Ordering of stationery and consumables and chasing Suppliers
• Reconciling the petty cash
• Franking and distributing of mail
• Performing 5-year and 10-year vetting and screening of new Employees
• Dealing with internal sales enquiries, sending out quotations, contracts etc.. 

18 month Management Assistant course completed after high school in South Africa.