If you’re a CEO, this is the AI and executive support ROI conversation you should be having.
(And if you’re an EA, this is the one to share.)
Let’s keep this deliberately conservative.
• CEO salary: $300,000 (low end, closer to a small business CEO)
• Executive Assistant salary: $70,000 (average US EA)
• CEO time value: ~$150 an hour
Using Harvard Business Review research on how CEOs actually spend their time, a capable Executive Assistant, as part of a broader executive support function, can conservatively reclaim around 22 hours a week of CEO capacity by owning email flow, meetings, routine work, and issue triage (see yesterday’s post for full breakdown).
That alone is worth roughly $158,000 a year in reclaimed CEO time.
Now add AI.
Used properly, AI removes a large proportion of the assistant’s transactional workload:
• Email drafting and summarising
• Meeting notes and follow-ups
• Briefings, updates, and first drafts
• Research and document summaries
This gives an assistant back 18–25 hours a week.
Here’s the part most organisations miss.
That time is not a cost saving.
It is a capacity multiplier.
Over 60% of assistants are already managing projects, alongside research, data analysis, and workflow optimisation. With AI acting as a thinking partner, assistants spend more time on judgement-heavy work that directly supports leadership.
If even half of 20 reclaimed assistant hours are reinvested into higher-level executive support, that creates 10 additional hours of CEO leverage every week.
At $150 an hour, that is $72,000 a year in additional CEO capacity.
On top of the $158,000 already reclaimed.
All supported by an assistant earning $70,000.
And this does not include the revenue-generating work a CEO can do in that reclaimed time.
AI does not reduce the value of assistants or executive support.
It concentrates it.
If your AI strategy focuses on automating tasks but ignores how executive support multiplies leadership capacity, you are leaving significant value on the table.
This isn’t an admin conversation.
It’s a leadership leverage conversation.
