The illuminati of CEOs' assistants (LOL)
(UnFortune Magazine) -- Social humiliation loomed. It was just moments before the dinner was to begin, and a senior executive at real estate firm Tishman Speyer realized that he had no idea which titles to use to properly introduce his guests, a group of American diplomats. Flummoxed, he called Carole Karpel, executive assistant to Jerry Speyer, Tishman's chairman and co-CEO. Karpel didn't know either, but she had a secret weapon on her shelf: a small white book with a quill on the outside listing the names and numbers of the 100 or so members of the Seraphic Society, an elite and secretive group of executive assistants to the most powerful people in the New York City area. "I remembered that one of our members was the former assistant to [former Secretary of State] Cyrus Vance," she says. "I just called her, and within three minutes she gave me the answer." Crisis averted. The request was nothing out of the ordinary for the Seraphic Society, which has serve