Justin Hendrix Named Executive Director of NYC Media Lab
NEW YORK, New York – NYC Media Lab is pleased to announce the appointment of Justin Hendrix as Executive Director. In this role, Hendrix will work with NYC Media Lab’s university partners and corporate members to further establish the Lab as a center for leading-edge innovation in the media industry. Justin has served as Acting Executive Director of the Lab since the August departure of Roger Neal, the founding Executive Director.
Launched by the New York City Economic Development Corporation, NYU-Poly, and Columbia University in 2010, NYC Media Lab is a public-private partnership that seeks to generate research, knowledge transfer, and talent development to advance New York City’s media industry. Charter member companies include Verizon, Hearst, AT&T, Time Warner Cable, NBC Universal, ESPN and HBO. Hendrix will report to the oversight board that includes Eric Gertler, Executive Vice President and Managing Director for the Center for Economic Transformation at NYCEDC; Orin Herskowitz, Executive Director and VP of Intellectual Property and Technology Transfer at Columbia Technology Ventures; and Dr. Paul Horn, Senior Vice Provost for Research at New York University and Senior Vice Dean for Strategic Initiatives and Entrepreneurship at NYU-Poly. Dr. Shivendra Panwar, Professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at NYU-Poly is the Lab’s Faculty Director.
Before joining NYC Media Lab in 2012 as Director of Membership, Hendrix was Vice President, Business Development & Innovation for The Economist Group in the Americas, where he directed the Group's innovation process, including prototyping, testing, and commercializing new digital media business concepts.
Prior to this role, Hendrix directed brand marketing and communications and ran The Economist’s thought leadership events business in the Americas. Hendrix developed multimedia event brands for The Economist including the Ideas Economy series of events, which generates debate on issues including innovation, talent, infrastructure, and information that featured participants ranging from Clay Christensen and Michael Porter to Elon Musk and Vinod Khosla; and the Buttonwood Gathering, a global conference on banking, finance and economics that featured participants such as Timothy Geithner, Larry Summers, Elizabeth Warren, and Vikram Pandit. He implemented a brand marketing strategy for The Economist which helped double readership, including advertising campaigns recognized at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. He also launched The Economist Film Project, a digital and on-air partnership with PBS Newshour that identified promising documentary films on international issues.
Hendrix is a graduate of the College of William & Mary and is a Master of Science in Technology Commercialization candidate at the McCombs School of Business, University of Texas at Austin. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and two children.
About NYC Media Lab
NYC Media Lab connects companies seeking to advance new media technologies with university labs, programs and talent in New York City. Launched by the New York City Economic Development Corporation, NYU-Poly, and Columbia University, NYC Media Lab is a public-private partnership encompassing all the universities of NYC. NYC Media Lab corporate members include AT&T, ESPN, HBO, Hearst, NBCUniversal, Time Warner Cable, and Verizon. The Lab tackles the big questions facing the media industry today, with the goal of generating research and development, knowledge transfer, and talent development. More at http://nycmedialab.org.
