Meet Alejandra Duque Cifuentes
Founder & Principal, ADC Consulting
Photo by Jenny Roso
Alejandra Duque Cifuentes (she/her) is a nonprofit leader and advocate working to advance a more just, equitable, and inclusive arts and cultural ecology by developing measures so that arts workers, businesses, and organizations can thrive. Her work is of particular significance to individual arts workers who have been historically under supported, including disabled artists, immigrant artists, artists of color, and low-income artists as well as small-budget art making organizations. She brings 15+ years of experience and expertise in strategy, general management, fund development, community organizing, arts education, professional development, and artistic production.
Alejandra’s leadership is adaptive, empathetic, and multifaceted, and draws upon her lived experiences as an immigrant and arts worker in New York City for 15+ years. Her professional and educational background encompasses business, creative, and civic realms, including a BA from Columbia University School of General Studies in theater directing and an early career as a theater artist, stage manager, and arts educator.
She moves with ease and intelligence across sectors, issues, and among diverse stakeholders, from managing internal staff and teams to engaging community and philanthropic partners, artist constituencies, donors, and the general public. She is known for her ability to get results and draws on her deep community relationships to drive accountable collaborations based on trust and data.
Keep reading to see how she got here
Dance/NYC
Formerly as Executive Director of Dance/NYC, Alejandra acted as a leading voice advocating for dance workers and organizations to city, state, and federal governments and the philanthropic community. She led the organization’s justice, equity, and inclusion initiatives including the Disability. Dance. Artistry. and Immigrants. Dance. Arts, and the recently launched Dance. Workforce. Resilience. initiative.
As head of research, she spearheaded the publication of three major research studies including: Immigrants. Dance. Arts: Data on NYC Dance; Advancing Immigrants. Dance. Arts; Defining “Small Budget” Dance Makers in a Changing Dance Ecology. She is also currently leading the groundbreaking Dance Industry Census, a first-of-its-kind effort to count every dance worker, business, and entity in the metropolitan NYC area.
She expanded the organization’s grantmaking portfolio to three active grant programs distributing nearly $1 million in funds annually, serving over 1,200 dance makers in the New York City metropolitan area.
Since taking the helm of the organization in 2019, Alejandra increased the organization’s annual budget by 245% and tripled staffing capacity. This growth has been in response to the overwhelming demand for its services and includes the establishment of employee programs and benefits that model the conditions it champions for the sector.
"Alejandra’s strength is her ability to push through with a unique and clear vision that she communicates to all invested parties. As one of her direct reports stated, ‘Alejandra’s approach is rooted in relationship building and partnership and moves from a place of possibility and trust. This is the core of who Alejandra is and anyone who works with her is made better for the experience.’"
ELISSA D. HECKER, ESQ.
Chair, Dance/NYC
Covid-19 Relief
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, Alejandra played a central role in directing resources and advocating for the needs of the sector by disseminating over $1.25 million dollars in relief support to 750+ individual dance workers and 125+ dance making organizations across four grantmaking initiatives including the Coronavirus Dance Relief Fund and Disability. Dance. Artistry. Dance and Social Justice Fellowship program.
She spearheaded the sector’s first research study, the Coronavirus Dance Impact Study, assessing the impact of the pandemic on the dance community through 2021 and launched the multi-platform advocacy campaign titled #ArtistsAreNecessaryWorkers.
In support of the City’s recovery efforts she endorsed the creation of the Open Culture Program, penning an op-ed with Jimmy Van Bramer, the former City Council Member and Chair of Cultural Affairs, Libraries and International Intergroup Relations Committee, and acted as an organizational lead for City Artists Corps Advisory Group, a partnership of 16 service and grantmaking organizations across artistic disciplines charged with distributing $5,000 grants to 3,000 NYC-based arts workers.
“In a landscape demanding both vision and pragmatism, Alejandra is unparalleled. Her nuanced grasp of the cultural ecosystem is complemented by her capacity to foster accountable collaborations. Whether as a former leader at Dance/NYC or as a Cultural Policy research partner, she has been a stalwart advocate for justice, equity, and inclusion.”
GONZALO CASALS
Educator, policymaker, and cultural producer
Former Commissioner of the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs
Boards & Committees
Through her work on cultural policy, Alejandra has earned appointments to Mayor-Elect Eric Adams’ Transition Committee on Parks, Arts & Culture and A Better Contract for New York’s Joint Task Force. She sits on the boards of Nonprofit New York and New Yorkers for Culture and Arts, and is a member of the leadership council of Creatives Rebuild New York, a $125 million program established by The Mellon Foundation, the Ford Foundation and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, which aims to provide artists with full-time employment opportunities or a guaranteed income in order to revitalize the city’s cultural workers and venues, which have faced steep losses in income and revenue since the onset of the pandemic.
Production & Education Background
With more than 10 years of production and stage management experience in theater and dance, prior to joining Dance/NYC, she toured nationally and internationally with Zaccho Dance Theatre, Bandaloop, Dancing in The Streets, The Foundry Theatre, and Columbia University School of the Arts, among others. As a teaching artist, Alejandra taught children and adults of all ages how to express themselves through theater and movement practice in over 100 New York City public schools and through community theater programs in both English and Spanish. In 2011 she founded Theatre That Transcends, which taught local, underserved communities how to express themselves and address community issues through the art of theater.
A New Chapter
In December of 2022, Alejandra transitioned out of her role of Executive Director at Dance/NYC setting in its place a significant structural shift for the organization aimed at creating a more democratic leadership structure for the organization’s future. As a summation of her work and commitment to the sector, she established ADC Consulting, a boutique arts consultancy firm, in order to equip mission-driven organizations to create long-term cultural impact through research, grant making, advocacy, project management and organizational change. After being a proud Queens resident for 16 years, she has set new roots in the pacific northwest in the greater Seattle area of Washington state. She identifies as a white, immigrant, Latina woman, who believes healthy communities need a strong arts and culture sector and is committed to anti-racist practices that ensure artists can thrive in the United States.
ALEJANDRA IN THE PRESS
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Crain's New York Business 2021: Notable in Nonprofit and Philanthropy
Alejandra Duque Cifuentes is a fierce proponent of justice in the industry, working to help African American, Latino, disabled and immigrant artists persevere despite the additional obstacles they face.
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Dance/NYC Announces New Leadership Structure
In her 7-year tenure, Ms. Duque Cifuentes led Dance/NYC through a pandemic that impacted the performing arts like no other sector, where she led the distribution of over $1.55 million in relief support to the dance community.
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Leadership Corner: Alejandra Duque Cifuentes, Executive Director, Dance/NYC
On Working on Social Justice Issues, Immigrant Artists, the State of the Field, and You Doing You
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Podcast No. 101: Alejandra Duque Cifuentes
As an activist, Ms. Duque Cifuentes plays an integral part in advancing a more equitable arts and cultural ecology by working on measures to increase access, justice, equity, and inclusion within dance for disabled artists, immigrant artists, and artists of color in the five boroughs of New York City.
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Ayudar a su comunidad a través del baile: la colombiana que lucha por los derechos de los hispanos en Nueva York
Translation: Helping her community through dance: The Colombian who fights for the rights of Latinos in NYC
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NYC Mayor Eric Adams and Comptroller Brad Lander Release Five Key Actions for A Better Contract For New York
“It is my honor to represent the performing arts nonprofit community on this important task force. Our shared commitment to strengthening the nonprofit sector and elevating all of our collective work is an important priority,” said Alejandra Duque Cifuentes.
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How Dance/NYC & Alejandra Duque Cifuentes Are Fighting COVID-19
Long before she officially took on the reins of Dance/NYC as Executive Director, Alejandra Duque Cifuentes had already spent years on forefront of advocating for human rights. In establishing the Dance/NYC Dance CRF, she and her colleagues are putting money where it is needed most: in the hands of universally unemployed and vulnerable dancers.
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Performing Artists and the Financial Fallout of the Coronavirus
Dance/NYC has been conducting a survey of the dance industry since the closures began. Alejandra Duque Cifuentes, its executive director, told me that, among the fifty-four responses the organization had received by Sunday, the average self-reported annual income was less than thirty-five thousand dollars a year, which in New York City is just above the poverty line.
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Do Men Still Rule Ballet? Let Us Count the Ways.
Alejandra Duque Cifuentes, executive director of the dance advocacy organization Dance/NYC, believes this work has broad implications. “The kinds of market analyses that exist in other industries, where you can easily identify national or regional trends, all of those things have been largely missing from dance,” she said.
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What Does Fair Pay for Dancers Actually Look Like?
Dance/NYC executive director Alejandra Duque Cifuentes suggests it’s time for dance to develop a tool for financial transparency. One model is what WAGE (Working Artists and the Greater Economy) has done for the visual-arts world, listing baselines for “how much it pays to be in rehearsal, on a panel, in residence or to teach a class,” she says.