About Eric Blair-Joannou

Eric Blair-Joannou graduated cum laude from Cornell University with an A.B. (B.A.) in History and French Literature, and received an M.B.A. and an M.S. in Urban Planning from Columbia's Graduate Schools of Business and Architecture, Planning, & Preservation. While at Columbia, he was part of the runner-up team in the inaugural U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development's (HUD) Innovation in Affordable Housing Student Design & Planning Competition, presented by then-U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Shaun Donovan. He has worked at J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.'s global headquarters in Asset Management, at the NYC Dept. of City Planning, and at the New York State Dept. of Transportation. While at the NYC DCP he was responsible for amending and implementing changes in standards for the Universal Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP), which governs the land development process in the City of New York.

In addition to working for his fourth-generation family parts supply business, and in industrial real estate for his family office, Eric currently serves on the Cornell University Council; as a trustee of Historic Hudson Valley, the Columbia County Historical Society, and the Bronx Museum of the Arts; a volunteer curatorial researcher in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Michael C. Rockefeller Wing (f/k/a the Department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas); a member of the New-York Historical Society's Library Committee; a member of the Cornell University Library and Botanic Gardens Advisory Councils; a Vice-Chairman of the Young New Yorkers for the Philharmonic; and a member of both the Morgan Library's Drawings & Prints Department visiting committee and Young Fellows Steering Committee. Eric is also a Shareholder (#13) of the Library Company of Philadelphia. He is a former docent at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, trustee of the Cornell Rowing Association (where he founded the Biennial Cornell Rowing Annual Fund Dinner), Family & Children's Garden volunteer at the New York Botanical Garden, and founding Co-chair of the Lincoln Center Junior Business Council. Eric has contributed to the NYC-based think tank the Center for an Urban Future, hosted a bicycle-focused blog for the Royal Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and has formally studied 7 languages. He is a Class of 2024 Fellow of the Economic Club of New York.

Several years before the inception of the David Geffen/Avery Fisher Hall renovation project at the New York Philharmonic on the Lincoln Center campus, Eric worked with McKinsey & Co. on concertgoer engagement which directly resulted in concertgoer experiential changes at the Philharmonic, and served as key pre-planning material for the re-design process. While at the NYBG he taught edible gardening to Bronx children and families and remains an amateur horticulturist, having restored and in the process of restoring several native landscapes on family-owned properties. As a trustee serving on the Bronx Museum of the Arts' Capital Projects Committee, he and his colleagues were successful in securing over $32 million in public funding from the NYC Economic Development Corporation, the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, and other agencies toward a transformative renovation for the Museum. The collaboration selected Marvel Architects for the project, and the 2025 result will completely change the building's corner volume and generally unify the Museum's campus on Grand Concourse.

Eric volunteers at his church, St. James' (Episcopal), is a registered marriage officiant, and lives on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, in New York City.

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