Community Capital

After receiving his master's degree in Russian history at Columbia University, Clifford Rosenthal worked as a freelance translator while organizing food cooperatives in New York City and Connecticut. He brought his skills to successive nonprofit jobs for a statewide Indigenous organization and a national farmworker advocacy organization. He joined the National Federation of Community Development Credit Unions in 1980, becoming its executive director in 1983. Under his leadership, the federation became the credit union industry's leading voice on issues affecting low-income and minority communities. To bring resources to the federation's member credit unions, he launched its Capitalization Program, raising more than $100 million from faith-based and social investors, foundations, banks, and government. He cofounded and co-led the coalition that successfully advocated for the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund. He personally assisted the organizing of nearly a dozen credit unions around the country and wrote Organizing Credit Unions: A Manual. After leaving the federation (now known as Inclusiv) in 2012, he headed the Office of Financial Empowerment of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. In 2018 he published the groundbreaking volume, Democratizing Finance: Origins of the Community Development Financial Institutions Movement. He served on the Consumer Advisory Council of the Federal Reserve Board and the advisory board of the New York City Office of Financial Empowerment. Rosenthal was honored with the highest awards of the National Credit Union Foundation, the Opportunity Finance Network, the Insight Center for Community Economic Development, and the Lawyers Alliance of New York City. Recognizing his aid after Hurricane Katrina, in 2009 the ASI Federal Credit Union in New Orleans named its community center after him. In 2019, he was inducted into the African-American Credit Union Coalition's Hall of Fame.