Martha Alburquerque Borish is Director of Special Projects at the CUNY Dominican Studies Institute (CUNY DSI) at The City College of New York, where her work sits at the intersection of cultural institution-building, public humanities, research, education, philanthropy, technology, and community engagement. A Dominican-American born and raised in New York City, Borish brings more than two decades of experience spanning higher education, entrepreneurship, publishing, the arts, technology, strategic communications, and organizational development.

At CUNY DSI, Borish leads and develops complex institutional initiatives connecting scholarship with public engagement. Her portfolio encompasses cultural and historical programming, grant-funded initiatives, educational programs, institutional partnerships, donor engagement, and the development of the Dominican Center for the Arts and Culture, a major new cultural institution in Upper Manhattan that will include the first museum in the United States devoted to Dominican history, arts, and culture.

Her work on the Dominican Museum brings together scholars, curators, archivists, architects, designers, artists, elected officials, cultural institutions, donors, community organizations, and other partners to translate academic research and historical collections into meaningful public experiences. She is particularly interested in the ways museums, archives, material culture, art, and technology can expand access to scholarship and create new ways for the public to encounter Dominican history.

Borish's scholarly and public-humanities interests include Dominican and Dominican-American history, cultural memory, institution-building, material and visual culture, archival preservation, museums, digital humanities, artificial intelligence, and the relationship between technology and access to knowledge. Her work at CUNY DSI has included the development and implementation of research, archival, educational, and cultural initiatives; collaborations with scholars and institutions in the United States and abroad; and projects designed to bring historical scholarship beyond traditional academic spaces and into schools and communities.

She also oversees and develops grant-funded cultural initiatives that connect scholarship, contemporary artistic practice, and community participation. Her current work includes Muralscape, an arts and public-history initiative supported by NewYork-Presbyterian that will create a series of community murals in Northern Manhattan as part of an art walk leading toward the Dominican Center for the Arts and Culture. Across these projects, Borish approaches cultural development not simply as programming, but as a form of long-term institution-building and stewardship.

Before entering higher education, Borish built a career as an entrepreneur and early adopter of emerging technologies. She founded or co-founded ventures in art, digital publishing, e-commerce, media, and technology at moments when each industry was undergoing significant disruption. In the early 2000s, she co-founded Eklektik Art, one of New York City's earliest mobile gallery concepts, which created alternative exhibition opportunities for emerging and underrepresented artists. She later co-founded Sell Your Stuff, the East Coast's first eBay drop-off franchise, helping bring the rapidly developing world of online commerce to consumers unfamiliar with the technology.

Borish was also co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of Blurt Inc., an early digital publishing platform developed during the emergence of blogging and user-generated web publishing, and co-founded BP Wiz, a technology platform designed to help aspiring authors and entrepreneurs develop professional book proposals. She subsequently founded and served as Editor-in-Chief of Lela Luxe, an independent digital publication that grew to more than 100,000 monthly readers and developed relationships with major fashion, beauty, media, and luxury brands.

For more than a decade, Borish also worked as a content, branding, and strategy consultant. Her work connected her with organizations and brands including Vogue, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Dove, Neutrogena, and Chanel, and her writing and editorial work has appeared through outlets including the Chicago Tribune, HBO, and El Diario. Her approach to communications has consistently centered on translating complex subjects into narratives that are intellectually accessible without diminishing their complexity.

In 2020, Borish published Daydreams: Manhattan, a personal literary and visual tribute to New York City developed during the COVID-19 pandemic. The project reflects a lifelong attachment to books, photography, art, architecture, memory, and the experience of New York City.

Borish holds a Bachelor of Science in Biology with studies in Biochemistry from Pace University and an MBA in Global Management from the University of Phoenix. Her graduate research examined the application of the Japanese philosophy of Kaizen—continuous improvement—to organizations outside traditional retail environments. That philosophy continues to influence her approach to leadership, organizational development, and project management: institutions, like ideas, are strengthened through continual questioning, experimentation, learning, and refinement.

Her interdisciplinary background informs a central question that runs through much of her work: how can scholarship, culture, technology, and entrepreneurship be brought together to build institutions that outlive the individual projects that created them? Her interests continue to center on books, art, history, cultural heritage, emerging technologies, innovation, and the creation of new ways for people to access and engage with knowledge.