Meet grace POWER

Booking travel is among the many elements of Grace Power’s role as an Executive Secretary at professional services business KPMG

• Tell us a little about your career to date and your company’s line of business. I’m an Executive Secretary for two partners and two directors here at KPMG, based in Canary Wharf, London. I joined the company in January last year as a Team Secretary on the recommendation of a friend. Before that I spent three years in logistics roles at Direct Line Group. It was very different to what I’m doing now!

• What do your general responsibilities include at KPMG? My role is pretty varied but the main things that I take care of are diary management, booking business travel for the partners and directors I look after, and arranging events, as well as some other day-to-day responsibilities. Events take up a lot of my time and the amount of business travel bookings I handle really depends on the time of year. to arrange a trip to Maastricht recently, for example, where they wanted to travel by rail, which I couldn’t do online. and then to several destinations within the country. That was complicated, plus we had to make visa arrangements. But our travel team are great – there’s always someone available on the phone.

• Have you experienced any recent travel disruptions? One of the directors got stuck in Munich earlier in the year when there was heavy snowfall. We have an out of hours contact but he rearranged his flight and booked himself a hotel room rather than bothering me in the evening!