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Jhaelen Hernandez-Eli

Assistant Professor Adjunct

Jhaelen Hernandez-Eli is a non-profit executive dedicated to transforming institutions and the communities they serve. His various leadership positions straddle operations, fundraising, community engagement, economic development and curatorial oversight of contemporary architecture.  

Hernandez-Eli’s roles include 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). Prior to NYCEDC, he was Associate Principal at Diller Scofidio + Renfro. 
At The Met, Jhaelen determined 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 a new generation of thinkers—Charles Birnbaum, Frida Escobedo, Nathan Rich and Miriam Peterson, Nader Tehrani, Thomas Woltz, 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 are 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, 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, by Yale University Press.

Hernandez-Eli’s work at NYCEDC revitalized communities via 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.

Hernandez-Eli received an M.Arch from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design and a B.Arts from the University of California, Berkeley.

  • Founded by inventor, industrialist and philanthropist Peter Cooper in 1859, The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art offers education in art, architecture and engineering, as well as courses in the humanities and social sciences.

  • “My feelings, my desires, my hopes, embrace humanity throughout the world,” Peter Cooper proclaimed in a speech in 1853. He looked forward to a time when, “knowledge shall cover the earth as waters cover the great deep.”

  • From its beginnings, Cooper Union was a unique institution, dedicated to founder Peter Cooper's proposition that education is the key not only to personal prosperity but to civic virtue and harmony.

  • Peter Cooper wanted his graduates to acquire the technical mastery and entrepreneurial skills, enrich their intellects and spark their creativity, and develop a sense of social justice that would translate into action.