Javier Hernandez (’23) is a champion for local innovation and community engagement. A graduate of the Master of Public Service (MPS) program in Class 17, Hernandez has merged his passions for economic development and community engagement to foster impactful growth in his home region of Northwest Arkansas.
His commitment to driving local impact recently earned him a spot on the Northwest Arkansas Business Journal’s Fast 15 Class of 2026, which celebrates emerging leaders under the age of 30 who are driving innovation and success in the business and nonprofit sectors.
Hernandez credits his trajectory to a fellow Clinton School alumnus, Dylan Edgell (’19), who introduced him to the program while Hernandez was interning at the University of Central Arkansas’s Center for Community and Economic Development.
A Northwest Arkansas native and graduate of Rogers Heritage High School, Hernandez currently serves as the Director of Community Development at the Rogers-Lowell Chamber. In this role, he blends strategic programming with face-to-face relationship building to cultivate multigenerational talent, support the area’s growing business community, and ensure Northwest Arkansas remains a vibrant place to live, work, and thrive.
Hernandez is also actively involved in community initiatives and serves on the board of the Rogers Public Education Foundation as well as the Buck Foundation High School scholarship selection committee.
What do you most enjoy about your current role as the Director of Community Development at the Rogers Lowell Chamber?
For me, it is absolutely the people I get to interact with every day. I’ve always been a people person, but this role officially makes me a professional people person!
In this position, we are truly focused on developing multigenerational talent across Arkansas and advancing regional growth through targeted leadership initiatives. Our chamber does an incredible job of looking beyond just traditional economic development. We want to create a place where people truly want to plant roots. We have incredible Fortune 500 companies here like Walmart, J.B. Hunt, and Tyson, and our goal is to build communities where professionals want to stay and live long after their corporate tenures.
I get to engage with three distinct levels of leadership. I work with high schoolers, manage several regional leadership programs—including LEAD, Arvest First Leadership, and Leadership Benton County—and oversee our nonprofit board service certification training.
What does public service mean to you?
At the Clinton School, we take a whole course dedicated to answering that exact question. For me, public service means giving yourself to something greater than yourself. It is about trying to find the issues that genuinely motivate you to work and create a difference.
We live in a time where people can feel increasingly isolated. To me, public service is about acting as a good neighbor, interacting intentionally, and developing spaces for community connection. In the simplest terms, public service is working on the things that make your community better.
What is one thing that most people don’t know about you?
A lot of people are surprised to find out that I am a certified member of the Benton County Master Gardeners. People usually see the organization as primarily being for retirees, but I learned so much going through the Master Gardener training and all the people I’ve met along the way.
I think gardening literacy is a bit of a forgotten skill for my generation, and the Master Gardeners taught me to be grateful for passed-down knowledge. You have so much to learn from people who have done this for decades. Today, I love using those skills to volunteer with community beautification projects across Benton County. It is a skillset and a philosophy that I carry directly into my professional career.
What was your favorite class in your time as a Clinton School student?
I really enjoyed Dr. Charlotte Williams’ Philanthropy Leadership and the Nonprofit Sector course. It opened my eyes to a world I had always been interested in but lacked formal insight into. The class taught us the psychological motivations behind why people choose to give, and it immediately piqued my interest in turning that dynamic into a career. It proved that philanthropy is less about transactions and more about building relationships to create a better community through a public service lens.
What skills did you learn at the Clinton School that you still put to use in your job or life today?
Program planning and evaluation are skills I use daily, alongside the field research methods that allow me to dive into an entirely unfamiliar community, figure out what residents need, and successfully evaluate the outcomes.
At the Chamber, we are analyzing data to build an advanced board service leadership program designed for current board members and executive directors who want to reinvigorate their organizations. My education taught me to think critically about how and why we implement programs. We always must anchor our work in a theory of change that evolves over time. As I learned in Dr. Al Bavon’s class, program evaluation is an iterative project. You constantly have to bring in fresh ideas and data, or you are already behind the curve.