“You won't be a great leader if you want to do everything yourself or just get the credit for it.”said Andrew Carnegie, American industrialist, businessman and philanthropist. And every large company or its president knows that his right arm is in his secretary, a day that will be celebrated tomorrow. Even if it is a word that is out of use or has changed, and the roles have evolved.
The celebration of this date was made official during the first Inter-American Congress of Secretaries, held in Argentina, in the 1970s and there it was agreed to set April 26 as Secretary's Day.because it was the date on which this event took place at the hands of the Inter-American Federation of Associations of Secretaries, Fias, an entity that aims to work on technical, moral, cultural and human improvement regarding the profession.
However, this day was previously celebrated on September 30, the birthday of Lilian Sholes, daughter of the creator of the first commercial typewriters, since she was the one who publicly tested the quality of this tool, with which work began. of writing.
The origin of the concept of secretary is based on the word secret and this reflects its relationship with the loyalty of these people towards companies and their managers, therefore, they play a crucial role.which goes beyond functions such as filing, answering the phone, keeping the boss's agenda and writing letters.
In the same history there are cases of secretaries who went beyond their role, which is why there are stories of some of them that are an example to this day.
Bette McMurray
Bette Claire McMurray was born in Dallas in 1924 and during her youth she was in the artistic world, where she sculpted and painted with oils. It was after her that she had to leave the arts and applied to work as an executive secretary at Texas Bank and Trust. McMurray had several spelling mistakes, so she used to get frustrated and it was then that she decided to create Liquid Paper, now famous as a proofreader, she started selling it to her colleagues under the name 'Mistake Out', and then traded her company for US$47. millions.
Viola Turner
Viola Turner was born in the years of segregation of black minorities in the United States, in Georgia. She grew up in a family of humble parents, she managed to change the investment strategy of North Carolina Mutual Insurance, Ncmi, she suggested concentrating on the insurer's portfolio of mortgages and public bonds when she worked as a secretary. Turner assumed responsibilities until she gained her own voice with her success in managing mortgages and public debt, thus becoming treasurer.
Freda Kelly
Freda Kelly was the secretary of one of the most globally recognized bands, The Beatles. She met the manager at one of her gigs in Liverpool and since then she had the task of managing the musicians' personal lives, in order to connect them with their families while they were on tour. But Kelly not only wanted to place spaces on the agenda, she created a music distribution system that generated profits for the group, a marketing system that several record labels copied.
Valerie Hemingway
Valerie Hemingway was the sister-in-law of the famous writer Ernest Hemingway and was also his secretary since she was 19 years old. They both met in Madrid while she was working at a Belgian news portal and it was there where the writer offered her a job as her secretary. The functions she performed were to accompany his events, answer and transcribe his manuscripts. But after the novelist's death, she found works like 'The Old Man and the Sea' and took charge of compiling and organizing it for publication.
Lilian Sholes
Considered the first secretary in history, Lilian Sholes was the first person to use a commercial typewriter, because one of the inventors, Christopher Sholes, was her father. She began this writing in public, with a greater speed of writing for the time, since the copyists wrote by hand and slowly, so incorporating the machine into the corporate sphere allowed a large number of documents to be stored quickly and easily read. for whoever had to review them.
