My mother worked with someone well above this woman's age who went from basically the department admin (admittedly, in IT with a programming group) to what was

My mother worked with someone well above this woman's age who went from basically the department admin (admittedly, in IT with a programming group) to what was apparently a pretty solid Lotus Notes admin, though she did a bit of job hopping in the process before ending back at the same company where she'd started. Many administrative jobs probably offer a variety of paths that could lead to this. The person working can be someone who does the job as presented to them, or they can be the person who finds out what's needed and figures out the way to do it, learning along the way. An awful lot of programs are written because someone with the skills wants to automate something they find boring.