Nine Years Shaping Culture At JFK T4
By MOHAMED FARGHALY
mfarghaly@queensledger.com
At the center of the constant motion inside John F. Kennedy International Airport, where rolling suitcases hum across polished floors and departure boards flicker through time zones, Vernon M. Taylor has spent nearly a decade focused on something less visible but just as critical: people.
Taylor, director of People Operations for JFKIAT, the company that operates Terminal 4, is marking his ninth year helping shape the workforce strategy behind one of the airport’s busiest hubs. “I was always told that working in the airport, one year in airports is like two years in real life,” he said with a laugh. “I really feel that way after nine years.”
Terminal 4 is in the midst of a sweeping $1.5 billion transformation designed to prepare for the future of air travel. As cranes rise and gates expand, Taylor has been working behind the scenes to build the infrastructure that cannot be seen in blueprints: succession plans, diversity metrics, compensation structures and career pipelines that stretch from middle school classrooms to executive offices.
When he arrived in 2017, he said, the company was at a crossroads. “When I first started at the company, back in 2017 there was no HR department. There was actually ran by legal,” he said. “Let’s just start with HR, so we could go ahead and teach the people what HR is.”
What began as a foundational effort to establish policies and procedures evolved into a broader reimagining of how people operations could drive growth. Taylor standardized job descriptions and compensation benchmarks, implemented succession planning for critical roles and introduced workforce diversity analytics to improve accountability. He also helped boost participation in the company’s employee engagement survey to roughly 90 percent, giving leadership clearer insight into workforce priorities.
The results have drawn recognition. JFKIAT has been named a Best Place to Work by Crain’s New York Business for six consecutive years, the only aviation company to earn that distinction during that period. It has also been recognized as a Best Place to Work in Aviation for two straight years.
Taylor sees those accolades as validation of a philosophy he repeats often: “I’m really big on aligning the people strategy with the long-term growth of the company.”
A Brooklyn resident who grew up immersed in city life, Taylor describes New York as “a tale of two cities,” shaped by both opportunity and inequity. Raised primarily by his grandparents, he learned early that discipline and purpose go hand in hand. “One of the things that they taught me is that if you’re always busy, you have no time to get in trouble,” he said. By his late teens, he was juggling school during the day and work at night, a pattern he continued through college and graduate school.
Before joining JFKIAT, Taylor held HR leadership roles in the transportation sector, including at subsidiaries of one of the world’s largest transit operators. “I really went from cars to buses to planes,” he said. “I’m really good at the transportation industry. I really get it. I think you really find some good salt of the earth people in transportation.”
That affinity for the industry shapes his approach at Terminal 4, where he also chairs the company’s diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging committee and leads 4GOOD, its philanthropic arm. Since 2022, the program has directed hundreds of thousands of dollars to local nonprofits and educational institutions across Queens.
“My family, on my dad’s side, is from Queens,” Taylor said. “I’m really passionate about giving back to the borough and about bridging the gap regarding job opportunities. I think there’s so many jobs at that airport that people in the community can really benefit from.”
That belief has translated into action. Under Taylor’s leadership, JFKIAT has expanded aviation-based internships and partnerships with institutions including Vaughn College of Aeronautics and Technology and Farmingdale State College. The company also partners with local middle and high schools to introduce students to aviation careers early, creating what Taylor calls a pipeline that “doesn’t start at college. It starts around eighth grade.”
The company’s annual Juneteenth celebration and job fair, held in partnership with the Council for Airport Opportunity and business partners across the terminal, has connected more than 800 job seekers each year to employment pathways within the broader JFK ecosystem.
The hardest chapter of his tenure came during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the bustling terminal fell silent. “You can walk in the terminal and hear a pin drop,” he said, likening the scene to a frozen kingdom from fantasy television. “For a lot of HR people, I think covid was probably the most challenging time in your career.”
Taylor and his team focused on both physical and mental health, navigating shifting public health mandates while striving to retain staff. “It also taught me how resilient we can truly be as a people,” he said. “I think we really became more tight knit after covid.”
Now, as passenger volumes climb and additional terminals come online, Taylor is preparing for what he calls a coming “war on talent.” His response includes a renewed emphasis on career development, mentorship and a unifying customer service culture branded internally as the “T4 State of Mind,” designed to ensure that passengers experience one seamless terminal rather than a patchwork of separate companies.
He is also steering the organization into new territory with artificial intelligence. “I know some people are scared of it, but I think AI is here to go ahead and augment your job, not to take your job,” he said. The company is developing policies, governance standards and training to guide responsible use.
As Black History Month draws to a close, Taylor reflected on his role as one of the few Black executives within the JFK terminal system. “It’s great to actually be a young, Black executive and see that everyone here is diverse,” he said. “Queens is the melting pot of New York City.”
For Taylor, the transformation of Terminal 4 is about more than steel and glass. It is about creating a workplace that mirrors the borough it serves and opens doors to careers that might otherwise seem out of reach.
“I’m really looking forward to another long run and tenure, just really giving back not only to JFK Airport, but the people of Queens as a whole,” he said.
