This post is part of the Behind the Scenes series, an introduction to all the departments at Geva and how they help make our shows happen.
My list titled “People I Don’t Know What I’d Do Without” is long, but Jen Everdyke and Katelyn Machnica are right up there at the top. They’re Geva’s Administrative Assistants, and I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who interrupts their work with questions and requests on an approximately daily basis. And somehow, while taking care of whatever it is I came to ask them, they also manage to act as if they didn’t have twenty more pressing and/or interesting things to do. Pretty amazing stuff.
These ladies are the support staff for the whole company. They place office supply orders for every department, manage the schedules for all our performance spaces and meeting rooms, process bills and log company credit card charges and incoming donations. When the Board of Trustees has a meeting, Katelyn and Jen are the ones who send out reminders, track attendance, confirm locations, order food and take minutes. Oh, and they keep the shared kitchen in order – a process that sometimes requires what Katelyn describes as “wrathful e-mails.”
In between all of that, they find time to answer the phone, man the door buzzer for visitors and – Katelyn’s words again – be “bros with the FedEx guys.”
By the way, did I mention only one of these hard-working ladies is here at a time? They share a desk and each work half the week, so one of their biggest jobs is keeping a detailed log so they always know what happened when they weren’t here. They must be doing a great job of that, because as far as I can tell, they both know everything!
Geva Journal 