Jhaelen Hernandez-Eli

Jhaelen Hernandez-Eli is a non-profit executive and recognized leader dedicated to transforming institutions and the communities they serve. He is Vice President, officer, and member of the management cabinet at The Metropolitan Museum Art, following his tenure as Senior Vice President at the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC).

At The Met, Jhaelen leads the vision and execution of a $2 billion capital program that is reimagining how the institution adapts to and engages with rapidly evolving socioeconomic and environmental challenges. Jhaelen has commissioned and continues to work closely with a collective of relevant thinkers and designers – Charles Birnbaum, Frida Escobedo, Nathan Rich and Miriam Peterson, Nader Tehrani, Thomas Woltz, Kulapat Yantrasast, Michael Young and Kutan Ayata, among others – to transform the institution, from its galleries to infrastructure, landscapes, amenities, and workspaces.

His perspective on the relevance of institutions is summarized in the soft manifesto, Building Tomorrow’s Met. The ambition of his initiatives and advocacy of the built environment are recognized by the New York Times as well as other publications including Architectural Record, Metropolis, and the New York Review of Books. Jhaelen is a contributor to the upcoming publication of Frida Escobedo’s work, Suspended Moment, published by Yale University Press.

Jhaelen’s previous work at NYCEDC revitalized communities through the strategic development of city-owned properties, using place-based approaches to foster neighborhood connectivity and economic resilience. Projects spanned the MADE campus (nARCHITECTS, W Architecture and Landscape Architecture), Brooklyn Army Terminal public realm (WXY Studio), Film & TV Soundstages (SO-IL with Marvel Architects), MART125 Community Center (Mario Gooden), SolarONE (Bjarke Ingels Group), as well as the City’s Cruise Terminals, food distribution centers and public markets.

Prior to NYCEDC, Jhaelen was an Associate Principal at Diller Scofidio + Renfro. He holds a M.Arch from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design and a B.Arts from the University of California, Berkeley.