Wellington Chen

Executive Director
Chinatown BID and Chinatown Partnership LDC

Wellington Chen has been serving as Executive Director of the Chinatown
BID and the Chinatown Partnership LDC. He has been the guiding force for the overall
direction of both organizations including strategic repositioning for the future.

Chen has a long track record of community engagement with decades of civic service. He began as a young volunteer, while still in school of architecture and environmental studies, at a time when many Main Street and downtowns were in decline leading to his lifelong pursuit of solutions for community resuscitation and rejuvenation.

He has been the first Asian American to serve on a community board in Queens and local LDC. Those years of active community involvement led him to eventually be
recruited to the NYC Board of Standards and Appeals, Queens Economic Development Corporation, and many others such as the NYC Landmarks Commission.

He has been serving on the Bowne House Historical Society, the Coro Leadership
NY, Governor’s Island Advisory Council, GrowNYC, the YMCA and Sch of Public
Health, the Lower Manhattan Historical Association, the Metropolitan Museum of
Art, NYC & Co. and NYS Regional Economic Development Council.

Chen’s design and build work included the structure which now houses the Permanent Mission of the Kingdom of Tonga to the United Nations at East 51 st St. He worked for I.M. Pei & Partners for 5 years before creating his own firm.

He has been honored with many awards including the Business Person of the Year
from Queens Chamber, the Downtown DOTTY Award and the Liberty Freedom Medal. He was born in Taiwan and grew up in Singapore, Hong Kong and Brazil before coming to the United States to obtain his architectural degree and he is also a graduate of the Coro Neighborhood Leadership Program.