Interview with Former Celebrity Assistant Bonnie Low-Kramen

Recently, I had the pleasure to interview Bonnie Low-Kramen, former Personal and Executive Assistant to Olympia Dukakis and her husband Louis Zorich.  I’ve got to tell you…”Bonnie is pretty amazing!”  Bonnie and I first connected years ago when I interviewed her while working on my master’s thesis. Since that time, she and I have visited with one another at various conferences and stayed in touch through social media and email.

1.  Bonnie, you have worked as a celebrity personal assistant for more than 25 years. Who have you supported, and how did you become a celebrity assistant?  Thank you, Stacy. I worked as the Personal and Executive Assistant to Oscar winning actress Olympia Dukakis (Moonstruck, Steel Magnolias) and her husband actor Louis Zorich (Mad About You.) I graduated from Rutgers University in New Jersey with a BA in English and Theatre. I thought I wanted to be an actress, but by the time I was in my senior year, I knew in my heart that I didn’t want to be onstage. I wanted to be backstage helping to make “the show,” and my first job turned out to be at the Pheasant Run Dinner Theatre Box Office selling tickets. I started making $4.25/hour, and I was thrilled to get it. That was my not so glamorous but very important start in show business.

Timing, luck, and relationships are how I landed my job working with Olympia Dukakis. A colleague from the Alley Theatre in Houston introduced us a year before Olympia became famous from the film Moonstruck in which she played Cher’s mother. All our lives changed after the Oscar.

Olympia was the Producing Artistic Director of the Whole Theatre in Montclair, NJ, and I landed the job as the PR Director which meant it was my job to get bodies into the seats for the plays she was selecting. Doing that meant that Olympia and I needed to work very closely together. When she landed the role in Moonstruck, they were shooting in Canada for a month. While Olympia was gone, she needed someone she trusted to be “communications central” for everyone who needed answers from her while she was away. That person was me. That’s how it all began. We didn’t know at the time that there was a name for what I was doing—Celebrity Personal Assistant. What we did know is that there were needs to fill, and I was the person who was going to fill them.

After Olympia won the Oscar, she followed up Moonstruck with Steel Magnolias, Look Who’s Talking, and Mr. Holland’s Opus. It became clear that she needed a full-time assistant to keep her life organized so I created a proposal which she accepted. Neither one of us dared to wonder how long this relationship would last, but we opened an office out of one of the bedrooms in her home. Olympia handed me a credit card to buy the computer and all the other supplies we needed, and we didn’t look back.

After 25 years of loving my work and being at the top of my game, I resigned from this dream job in 2011 to pursue another one. I continued to see the strong and pressing need for training and education for assistants.

2.  Tell us more about yourself.  I grew up in Belleville, New Jersey, and loved show business my whole life. As a child, I was a fan of television, films, music, books, and plays. It was my way of escaping to a whole new world and having an adventure in my mind. I love learning, and I am very curious, especially about what makes people tick. 

At this stage of my career, I am deeply concerned and committed to workplace issues that affect women which includes the epidemic known as workplace bullying. We are paying a huge price for these toxic behaviors, and they should not be tolerated. I want to help build a more respectful and healthy workplace by empowering and inspiring women. I’m a huge fan of Sheryl Sandberg and her book “Lean In.” I highly recommend it! 

Anyone who is dealing with a bully can read “Taming the Abrasive Manager,” which is an excellent book by Laura Crawshaw. 

3.  What have you most enjoyed about your career as a celebrity personal assistant?  I love the diversity of the creative and colorful people in entertainment. What I found was that it was always the assistants who were the sane ones, the ones who could be counted on to bring order to chaos. I love the image of pulling back the curtain and understanding the inner workings of “backstage” and the feeling of belonging there. I feel very at home in theatres. Everyone is free to be who they really are in the theatre. 

4.  Describe a typical work day as a celebrity personal assistant.  I worked in New York City, and my typical day went from 10 a.m. – 6 p.m., but that could change given the needs of the day. However, celebrity assistants in Los Angeles often work 7 a.m. – 4 p.m. in order to deal with the time difference. In entertainment, this is a very real factor. Other than that, no day is ever the same which I loved. That variety is the common denominator among every assistant I have ever met. We all love that no two days are ever the same. One day could be filled with personal work such as gift shopping, vacation planning, and errands; and another day could be all about business with reviewing contracts, editing a speech, and scheduling the next flight–and everything in between. Essentially my job description was anything and everything that enabled Olympia and Louis to focus on the things that only they could do, like learning their lines, going for costume fittings, etc. 

5.  What has been your magic formula for success?  Trick question, eh Stacy? I’m afraid there is no magic, at least not for me. Achieving what I have in life has been about getting up at 5 a.m. before anyone else in order to write my book, articles, emails, etc. It has meant making tough choices and sacrificing time with my son (now 26), my family, and my friends at times. I’ve tried hard to not allow obstacles, bad decisions, and negative people to stop me from achieving goals that matter to me. My skin has gotten much thicker over the years. I know the one success strategy that works is for women to solidly support other women, generously and without keeping score.

6.  What is the one thing you cannot live without?  One thing is too hard! Pen and paper. It makes me feel safe in the knowledge that my ideas are in writing and not subject to a drained battery or power outage. And hazelnut coffee, too. 

7.  How do you enjoy spending your free time?  I love my friends. To be with them going to the theatre, movies, or stand-up comedy is my idea of a great time. I also love the beach—any beach—and writing. My mind is able to rest at the ocean. 

8.  Your website www.BonnieLowKramen.com is a great resource for administrative professionals.  Describe some of the services and offers available on your website.  Visitors to my website can check out the tour schedule for our Be the Ultimate Assistant workshops all over the world. Los Angeles is Sept 20-21, 2014, and London is Nov 17-18, 2014. The calendar also includes the conferences where I am speaking including BEL, Executive Secretary LIVE, EUMA Paris, and APC. Vickie Evans and I are both doing corporate trainings inside companies, and we would love to hear from your readers. I do private mentoring and coaching for both assistants and managers. I love writing for my blog which offers lots of relevant articles for assistants and managers. I invite anyone interested in workplace issues to subscribe: www.bonnielowkramen.com

Together, assistants can change the world and education is the way that will happen.

Bonnie Low-Kramen – Best-selling author of Be the Ultimate Assistant, A celebrity assistant’s secrets to working with any high-powered employer, Bonnie Low-Kramen worked for
25 years as the Personal Assistant to Oscar winner Olympia Dukakis.  Her passion is about improving the American workplace through the training of assistants in workshops and presentations in major U.S. cities, Toronto, and London. Bonnie is a co-founder of New York Celebrity Assistants and is a contributing writer to Executive Secretary Magazine and Glassdoor.com, a workplace blog. Bonnie and Vickie Sokol Evans are traveling the world with their “Be the Ultimate Assistant” 2-day workshops, training inside companies, and speaking at global Conferences. Their commitment is to inspire a healthy, productive and mutually respectful workplace through the empowerment and training of the world’s assistants.