Executive Assistant to the CEO, Africa

About Zipline

Zipline is the world’s largest and most experienced drone delivery service. We are on a mission to serve all humans equally by ensuring access to food, medicine and essential goods anytime, anywhere. We design, build, and operate the world’s largest autonomous logistics system, delivering critical supplies quickly and reliably. Today, Zipline operates on four continents, makes a delivery somewhere in the world every 30 seconds, and has completed millions of deliveries to date, including blood, vaccines, medical supplies, food, and retail products.

Our customers include the world’s largest and most prominent healthcare systems, governments, retailers, restaurants and global businesses who rely on us to save lives, reduce emissions, increase economic opportunity, and provide delivery from point A to point B as fast as possible. The drone is only 15% of what we’ve built to enable seamless, reliable, global operations.

Our system strengthens supply chains, reduces congestion, and gives people time back. With more than 140 million commercial autonomous miles safely flown, Zipline is redefining access to healthcare, consumer products, and food across the globe.

We operate at a global scale and are looking for practical problem solvers who thrive on real-world challenges and rapid growth. Our team is motivated by building systems that have a direct, meaningful impact on people’s lives and by scaling the future of logistics. We are seeking people who sculpt from first principles, enjoy facing adversity, and can do the impossible at record breaking speeds.

About You and The Role

Zipline is looking for an exceptional Executive Assistant to support our CEO, Zipline Africa who leads Zipline’s Africa business across a fast-moving and complex operating environment, interacting with customers and overseeing product and engineering, operations, new deployments, commercial, regulatory, legal, finance, and talent.

This is not a traditional administrative support role. You will sit close to the center of Zipline’s Africa business, helping the CEO stay focused, prepared, and effective across a demanding mix of executive meetings, operational priorities, government and external engagements, travel, recruiting, communications, and cross-functional initiatives.

The right person for this role is highly organized, proactive, calm under pressure, and comfortable operating with a high degree of autonomy. You are someone who can anticipate what the CEO needs before she asks, bring structure to ambiguity, and ensure important details and follow-ups never get lost.

You will be trusted with sensitive company, operational, commercial, government, people, and executive information. You’ll need excellent judgment, strong written and verbal communication, discretion, and the confidence to work effectively with senior executives, government officials, customers, partners, employees, and teams across Africa and globally.

This role requires someone who is comfortable working across multiple time zones and adapting quickly as priorities change. You should be energized by a fast-paced environment and motivated by the opportunity to help a senior leader operate at her highest level.

What You'll Do

• Partner directly with the CEO to manage her calendar, priorities, commitments, and operating cadence across Africa.

• Own complex calendar management with strong business judgment, ensuring the CEO’s time is focused on the highest-impact priorities, decisions, relationships, and engagements.

• Prepare the CEO for meetings by gathering agendas, context, briefing materials, key decisions, open questions, stakeholders, and follow-up items.

• Coordinate executive meetings, leadership forums, operational reviews, external engagements, and other critical business meetings.

• Track follow-ups and commitments across meetings and workstreams, ensuring decisions, owners, deadlines, and next steps are clearly captured and closed out.

• Help manage the CEO’s internal and external relationships by ensuring timely responses, thoughtful preparation, and strong follow-through.

• Coordinate complex domestic and international travel, including itineraries, visas, logistics, meeting schedules, and contingency planning.

• Support engagements with government officials, healthcare partners, customers, investors, and other external stakeholders, ensuring the CEO is well prepared and supported.

• Support recruiting and hiring activities, including interview scheduling, candidate coordination, debriefs, and confidential follow-up.

• Assist with preparation of presentations, briefing documents, meeting notes, and executive communications.

• Help the CEO stay organized across multiple priorities, surfacing what requires her attention and proactively flagging upcoming deadlines, risks, and conflicts.

• Represent the CEO with professionalism, warmth, discretion, and sound judgment in interactions across Zipline and externally.

• Proactively identify ways to improve how the CEO’s time, information, meetings, and follow-through are managed.

• Act as a trusted partner to the CEO and an effective connector across the Africa leadership team and broader Zipline organization.

What You'll Bring

• 8+ years of experience as an Executive Assistant, ideally supporting a CEO, executive, country leader, general manager, or other senior leader in a fast-paced organization.

• Exceptional judgment and discretion, particularly when handling confidential executive, people, commercial, government, and operational information.

• Excellent calendar, meeting, travel, and logistics management skills in a high-velocity environment with constantly shifting priorities.

• Outstanding written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to communicate clearly and professionally with senior internal and external stakeholders.

• High ownership and follow-through. You notice dropped balls, close loops, and keep important work moving without needing constant direction.

• Strong prioritization instincts and the ability to protect executive focus while remaining responsive to urgent and important business needs.

• Comfort operating across multiple countries, cultures, and time zones.

• Strong organizational skills and attention to detail, with a high bar for preparation, accuracy, and reliability.

• Ability to anticipate needs, identify potential issues early, and proactively solve problems before they become obstacles.

• Confidence working with senior executives, government stakeholders, customers, partners, employees, and cross-functional teams.

• A service-oriented mindset with backbone. You are helpful, thoughtful, and proactive, while also comfortable protecting priorities, pushing for clarity, and escalating when needed.

• Energy, resilience, and enthusiasm for supporting a leader whose work directly contributes to the growth and impact of Zipline’s operations across Africa.

Voluntary Self-Identification

For government reporting purposes, we ask candidates to respond to the below self-identification survey. Completion of the form is entirely voluntary. Whatever your decision, it will not be considered in the hiring process or thereafter. Any information that you do provide will be recorded and maintained in a confidential file.

As set forth in Zipline ’s Equal Employment Opportunity policy, we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law.

Originally posted on Himalayas