About Us

After 18 years in the corporate world, providing secretarial and administrative support to senior and executive management in numerous industries, Laurie took her administrative experience one step further. In January 2004, she started Virtual Administrative Services, a virtual assistant business, to continue assisting businesses with the administrative facets of running a business.

Working in the financial, high-tech and engineering industries has provided Laurie with an extensive background in the administrative areas and that added edge in starting her own administrative service business as a Virtual Assistant. Laurie is proficient in windows and network environments using MS Office 2000 (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, MS Publisher, and Outlook). She also has experience in various other software applications including: Act 4.0 (client database program), Adobe Photoshop, Acrobat – PDF writer, Dreamweaver (web-page design), Gelco (expense reporting web program), ClearQuest (customized Quality Assurance bug tracking program) and Palm Pilot.

Laurie is professional, highly organized, upbeat, positive, and an independent individual with strong administrative and business skills. Laurie’s mission is to help you to build your business. She takes pride in the work she does and therefore your success is her success. It’s a win-win situation.

Background Information prior to self-employment

Laurie was employed on a part-time basis with a growth capital company. There she provided the administrative support to four partners of the firm and handled all administrative facets for the group.

Prior to the growth capital company, Laurie was employed within the high tech industry working for a company that developed internet security software to help organizations build secure, trusted foundations for e-business through authentication, authorization, encryption and public key management systems. With this new experience in the high tech world Laurie was able to develop a better understanding of internet security issues and developed web design skills. There she supported the executive management team by providing them with the necessary administrative assistance, she coordinated various off-site staff events, and coordinated on-going product training sessions for employees.

Prior to the high tech industry Laurie was employed with one of the largest engineering firms in Canada. There she provided the necessary administrative support to senior executives and engineers. Along side of the administrative support Laurie was involved in putting together numerous feasibility studies, request for proposals, and numerous marketing presentations that were required by prospective clients in various countries. Laurie also assisted in the coordination of numerous delegation trips to Canada and provided the required assistance to delegation leaders.

Previous to the engineering industry, Laurie held an administrative position with one of Canada’s larger financial companies. There she was involved in a large project that deployed laptops that were programmed to have direct access to the main database to the entire sales forces across the country. Laurie was recognized numerous times by executive management for her dedication to the project. Laurie also provided administrative support to a senior executive in the Client Services department. There she worked with managers and team leaders of each department to collect and prepare statistical information on an on-going basis for senior management’s review.

Laurie was employed as a communication assistant with the professional body for Canadian chartered accounts and prior to that she worked as an administrative assistant for a manufacturing company in the oil & gas industry. She worked in the accounts receivable department for a transportation company just after graduating from high school.