Layla Kashour

I have a total of 14 years of diversified experience working with a wide range of  people within and outside the Civil Service: administration and office management, visa Processing , integrity, customer service, and purchasing.

My career experience was mainly focused on office administration and management at foreign and/or diplomatic missions dealing with people  from different cultures and backgrounds. In addition to the security, high confidentiality and integrity.

working as an Executive Officer at the American University of Beirut has moved me another step up the ladder adding to my managerial, administrative skills including scheduling skills, agenda, benchmarking, 

preparing reports, research and translating data into tables and graphs, managing correspondence on behalf of the HR director and managing the departmental inbox, monitoring the departmental budget and executing requisitions on Oracle when needed. In addition to HR skills including HR policies and procedures revision, solving HR confidential issues, Assisting with the recruitment process. 

The also applies to my experience at the Australian Embassy as Visa Processing Officer, an Administrative Support Officer and with the Refugee team then as Visa Operating Officer. I have worked at the embassy for seven years managing huge workload, performing many administrative tasks. Working as an Administrative Support Officer has 

added to my administrative skills through managing the whole immigration inbox and responding to different enquiries.  As an  Administrative Officer, I gained an important expertise in  Revenue Receipting, which was reflected on  my performance evaluation, and the PMO gave me “performing exceptionally”. 

Working with the Partner and Refugee Team and as a Visa Processing Officer was also a challenge for me as I had to deal with many team members and direct contact with clients regarding their visa applications. The responsibility became higher with checking and verifying documents, Analyzing Visa applications, considering integrity and risk in decision-making, conducting research and analysis system checks for integrity purposes. This job requires direct and continuous interaction with refugees and with my colleagues in the team assisting each other to be able to meet deadlines and hit the number of visa grants within a specific timeframe. 

 I have also gained administrative experience by working previously at the British council as a customer service officer, and in addition to my previous experience working with INL program- sponsored by the US Embassy in liaison with the ISF which has played a major role in improving my training skills giving high weight to  office administration, in class trainings, interpretation, conflict of interest, high security, dealing with the legal authorities, interpretation and governmental relations.  

I have EMBA( Executive Master's Degree in Business Administration)  from the Lebanese American University preceded by a Bachelor Degree of Business Administration.