Founder: Kathie M. Thomas, AFAIOP, MVA, ASO

Our Mission
To be the household name for secretarial and admin support for home-based businesses.
To make secretarial and office support within easy reach of all small and home-based businesses throughout the world.

If you wish to join our team, click here.

• 2007 Listed in the Top 100 Australian Bloggers for Virtual Assistant - THE Blog
• 2006 Nominee for the Thomas Leonard International Virtual Assistant of Distinction Award
• 2004 Highly Commended Australian Achievers Award for Office Services and Supplies
• 2003 Highly Commended Australian Achievers Award for Office Services and Supplies
• 2002 - Highly Commended Established Business, Virtual Business of the Year, and Ambassador of the Year (Vic/TAS/SA) - MBN
• 2001 AIOP Award of Excellence, Highly Recommended
• 2000 Highly Commended Australian Achiever Award for Office, Secretarial & Desktop Publishing Services.
• 1999 Australian Achiever Award - Melbourne Secretarial & Word Processing Services, Winner.
• Kathie M. Thomas was awarded 'Member of the Year', Victoria in 1993 by the Institute of Professional Secretaries (IPSA) and was runner-up for the National Title.
• 'A Clayton's Secretary' was registered on National Secretaries Day in 1994.

How "A Clayton's Secretary" began (*explanation for meaning of name at bottom of page)

Before the Virtual Assistant industry began.........

‘A Clayton's Secretary' came out of a brochure I was preparing to tell businesses about my new service. I hadn't settled on a name and as I prepared the brochure I finished it with "..let me be the secretary you have when you haven't got a secretary". Immediately came to mind ‘A Clayton's Secretary'* and the name has been with me since. I had worked in the secretarial field for twenty-three years in widely different areas from the banking field to the Department of Defence, from a furniture store to a research organisation. My various positions required access to financial details and highly confidential material and at all times I believe I have carried out my duties with integrity, loyalty, confidentiality, competence and trust. Latter positions were as Personal Assistant to Directors and also to Project Officers. I was also very fortunate to have worked with the team administering the Australian Best Practice Demonstration Program and during that time developed a keen interest in developing and promoting Best Practice in Administration and related matters.

I am a Member of a number of organisations including the Australian Institute of Office Professionals (AIOP), and was selected as Member of the Year, Victorian Division in 1993. I also achieved runner-up for the National Award the same year. I believe my keen interest and involvement in Best Practice in Administration helped me achieve the award. It is also my intention that this should always be reflected in my work. We are also affiliated with Home Secretarial Services (HSS) in Los Angeles as well as registered with a number of VA networks globally.

‘A Clayton's Secretary' was first created as a home-based secretarial support service in 1994 and a couple of years was spent in building up the client base, thereby making it a full-time business. Never liking to say ‘no' to a client, there were times when Kathie was overflowing with work and sought out others who were home-based, with suitable computers, who could take on overflow work. Some of these people required training as they didn't have all the skills required to carry out some of the work and Kathie invested her time in training these people so that work could be carried out as efficiently and confidently as possible. With the advent of the internet a network was established and as the Virtual Assistant indutry developed ‘A Clayton's Secretary' changed its focus from entirely secretarial to administrative and other services, to encompass the virtual needs of all clients.

Today our membership is in twelve countries. We can handle transcription for 18 different languages. See our other pages for details.

* Claytons was the drink you had when you weren't having a drink in the 1980's in Australia and ever since then a 'claytons' was something you had when you didn't have whatever was the normal, in this case when you don't have a secretary of your own! We become your secretary. Of course, many of our team provide services other than secretarial, but the principal remains the same.