Tracey Clarke is delighted to announce the award for the 2010 Winston Churchill Memorial Trust Fellowship.

A very special research project which we were granted in January this year giving me the overwhelming opportunity to visit the USA for 5 weeks looking at how the Virtual Assistance Industry operates.

In the US the Virtual Assistance Industry is well established and recognised among businesses. We will be looking at how it continues to develop on an enormous scale, providing great benefit to businesses and helping those people who wish to set up in business working from their own home offices.

Our itinerary includes visiting colleges & universities, businesses & organisations who already work with Virtual Assistants, Chambers of Commerce, exhibitions, international VA Associations and established Virtual Assistants in the States of Virginia, Texas and California.

We are really excited and looking forward to meeting up with fellow VA's who we have already made good contact with through the Virtual Office Professional Degree Course at Sierra College in Sacramento along with Dr Cyndi Dunn and Roietta Fulgham, President of the California Business Education Association.

Our main aim is to look at how the US Virtual Assistance Industry impacts on businesses and the home working VA's; what new ideas and advancements we can bring back to the UK, helping to raise the much needed awareness to businesses of this change in working culture.