Overview

Secretary in Israel, a New Jersey limited liability company, was founded two-and-a-half years ago, in January 2008. Since then, we have worked with hundreds of clients from around the United States, the UK, Australia, and Thailand, successfully matching them with college-educated, American virtual assistants. Our virtual assistants work from their homes in Israel, performing a variety of administrative tasks for our clients.

How We Got Started

Secretary in Israel started as a solution to a problem--Kirk Hylan, CEO of InSite Networks, Inc., was struggling to find a smart assistant locally in the San Francisco Bay Area whom he could afford. After speaking with our founder Sarah Leah Gootnick, she matched him with Margelit, a US college-graduate who had recently moved from Pennsylvania to Jerusalem, Israel.

Kirk and Margelit started working together right away. Kirk was thrilled to finally have, as he has emailed to us numerous times, "the assistant he had always wanted" (but had never been able to find locally in the San Francisco Bay Area).

After the success of their working relationship, Sarah Leah founded Secretary in Israel in January 2008 to provide this service to other entrepreneurs and small business owners in the United States and abroad.

Our Founder

Sarah Leah Gootnick is a graduate of Columbia University.

Prior to founding Secretary in Israel, Sarah Leah worked for a variety of small and mid-size businesses. She worked in marketing for MRM Partners (a division of McCann Worldgroup) in San Francisco. Prior to that, Sarah Leah founded a nonprofit organization, the Empona Foundation, which helped over 1,000 low-income women get free mammograms and other breast cancer screening exams. The Empona Foundation won the Isabelle Allende 2003 Espiritu Award for the Peace and Protection of Women and was featured in a number of media outlets.

Would You Like to Learn More?

To learn more about the benefits that our clients are receiving, please visit our client testimonials page.