NEW YORK–Clifford Rosenthal, the long-time leader of what was formerly called the National Federation of CDCUs and today is known as Inclusiv, will be inducted into the Cooperative Hall of Fame.
“A trailblazer and innovative leader coining the phrase ‘community development credit unions,’ Cliff is one of the architects of community development finance, shaping the CDCU movement,” Inclusiv said in a statement, further praising Rosenthal for his “many decades of leadership and service.”
The induction ceremony will take place in Washington on Oct. 3.
A Career ‘Promoting Inclusion’
“Introduced to credit unions in the late 1970s, Clifford Rosenthal has spent his career promoting financial equity and inclusion in the nation’s most overlooked and underserved communities,” Inclusiv continued. “Growing up amidst transformative campaigns for social justice in the 1960s, Cliff began his cooperative journey by organizing and managing food cooperatives in New York City and Connecticut. This eventually led him to Washington and the National Association of Farmworker Organizations where he was tasked to organize a credit union to serve its members.
‘Sustained by Conviction’
“Upon his return to New York, Cliff joined the National Federation of Community Development Credit Unions (the Federation), first as a volunteer until he was hired as staff. By early 1983, the Federation was preparing to close for good after federal funding was eliminated,” Inclusiv continued in its statement. “Sustained by his conviction that community development credit unions (CDCUs) were important and must be preserved, he once again took on a volunteer role as the Federation’s executive director. In partnership with Annie Vamper, the pair rebuilt the Federation into a catalyst for transformative change.”
Inclusiv said Rosenthal played a strong role in the birth of the CDFI Fund in 1994 and also helped to secure NCUA’s issuance of a rule allowing low-income credit unions the exclusive privilege of raising secondary capital.
Work With the CFPB
Rosenthal retired from the Federation in 2012 and joined the federal government as the first head of the Office of Financial Empowerment within the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. He subsequently published Democratizing Finance: Origins of the Community Development Financial Institutions Movement. In 2019, he was inducted into the African American Credit Union Hall of Fame.