2024

Speakers

Lambert Fernando

Senior Security Manager at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Lambert Fernando is a Senior Security Manager. He has been with the Metropolitan Museum of Art for 23 years. He served in the U.S. Air Force during Operation Desert Shield and Desert Storm. After the completion of his tour, he studied painting and sculpture at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. He came to the Met as a Security Officer in 2000 and has steadily risen in the ranks, culminating into a management position in 2005. He currently oversees the Security Operations Center (SOC) and manages a team of 13 highly trained Security Operations Specialists. The SOC maintains a constant state of readiness. It houses crisis management, obtains threat intelligence information from internal and external sources, and serves significant initiatives. The SOC’s primary function is to support enterprise-wide situational awareness by providing around-the-clock, real-time view into the Museum’s security status while fostering optimal communications and responsiveness during security incidents.  

This is the third time that Lambert has been invited to speak at NCCPP. In 2019, Lambert conducted an extensive benchmarking study of cultural institutions internationally. His findings greatly helped the Museum in the completion of a comprehensive risk and vulnerability assessment of the Met Security Department programs, operations, and technologies. He presented his findings at NCCPP that same year. In 2022, he returned to present and take part in a panel discussion to explore how creativity and love for the art they protect enabled the museum security personnel to respond to, endure, and recover from the most acute challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic. A panel of officers discussed how they maintained their own resiliency throughout the pandemic, how their organization supported their resiliency/well-being, and the effect that the staff art exhibits have had on their job satisfaction and mental health. This year, Lambert and his colleagues will be presenting on the Met Museum’s response to the recent trend of climate activism. They will show a series of tabletop exercises, video reenactments of different scenarios, and discuss the various roles of key team members during these high-impact events.