Cliff Rosenthal joined the National Federation of Community Development Credit Unions (now, Inclusiv) in 1980 and served as CEO until 2012. He drafted the original concept paper calling for a CDFI fund and served in the leadership of the CDFI Coalition for two decades. After leaving the Federation, he launched and managed the Office of Financial Empowerment of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), developing initiatives to improve access to financial services for economically vulnerable consumers.

Trained as an historian, in 2018 he published Democratizing Finance: Origins of the Community Development Financial Institutions Movement (FriesenPress). His other works included Organizing Credit Unions: A Manual; “Credit Unions, Community Development Finance, and the Great Recession” (Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, 2012); and “People’s Credit: A Study of the Lending of the Lower East Side People’s Federal Credit Union, 1986-89.

He received the Herb Wegner Award of the National Credit Union Foundation (2005), as well as the highest awards of the Opportunity Finance Network; the Insight Center for Community Economic Development; the Lawyers Alliance of New York City; and in 2011, the Network of Latino Credit Unions and Professionals. The ASI Federal Credit Union in New Orleans named the “Clifford N. Rosenthal Community Resource Center” to honor his assistance after Hurricane Katrina. In 2019 he was inducted into the African-American Credit Union Hall of Fame.

In 2022 he served as consulting producer for the public television reality series, Opportunity Knocks$, which helps people improve their financial lives by linking them to credit unions, CDFIs, and other nonprofit organizations.