Cliff Effect Day at Circles USA’s 2025 Leadership Conference

Circles USA
Oct 7
4 min read

We’re offering something powerful (and deeply needed) at this year’s Circles USA Leadership Conference: our first-ever national Cliff Effect Day on Tuesday, October 21^st. This day-long event will launch in the morning with multiple mini-keynote addresses from Circle Leaders, who will share their personal experiences and transformative journey with attendees. We’ll follow the keynotes with three breakout sessions related to different aspects of the Cliff Effect; build momentum with an inspirational lunchtime address on the Cliff from our sponsors at Weber State University; and finish the day with a panel conversation that confronts head-on this complex, painful, often invisible problem in poverty work and public policy.

We all know the stories: people fighting their way out of poverty, guiding their lives and families toward greater economic stability—only to be pushed back by ceilings in the very systems supposedly designed to boost workers. Sometimes the Cliff Effect is triggered by seemingly minor economic shifts: one extra hour of work. A slight pay raise. Just enough to cross an income threshold that triggers a loss of eligibility for crucial benefits. The net gain? Sometimes zero…or worse. Any sudden rise in earnings can leave workers without childcare, housing, transportation, food, or healthcare subsidies.

Circles USA’s first-ever Cliff Effect Day will probe strategies and stories from chapters across the country, spotlighting leaders with vital experience navigating benefit cliffs. By attending this day, you’ll leave with:

New awareness of the real-world, human cost of policies that don’t account for the Cliff Effect.
Concrete ideas from Circles members and partners who are mitigating this system with programs, policy adjustments, and strategies that do reduce cliffs.
Action inspiration in the form of tools, frameworks, and partnerships you can carry back to your community to spark change.

Our breakout sessions (aka the Cliff Effect Track) will include:

Cliff Effect 101, Bridging the Gap: Understanding the Cliff and Moving Beyond It, presented by Kamatara Johnson, Circles USA Executive Director, and Michelle Crawford, Circles Salt Lake Executive Director
Cliff Effect 102, Employer Strategies and Tools to Navigate the Cliff, presented by Alex Ruder with the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta
Cliff Effect 103, Current Research, Promising Policies, and Coalition Building, presented by Keith Barnes with the Martha O’Bryan Center, and Nic Dunn from the Sutherland Institute.

Cliff Effect Day will conclude with a panel discussion that brings together national researchers, state policy advocates, community-based practitioners, and people with lived experience to share what’s working, what’s emerging, and where we must focus next. This dynamic conversation will focus on bridging local action with national momentum to ensure families can truly move beyond the Cliff.

Meet our Panelists:

Nic Dunn serves as Vice President of Strategy and Senior Fellow at Sutherland Institute, where he leads policy research, coalition building, and public advocacy for policies that strengthen opportunity and upward mobility, including social safety net reform.

Michelle Crawford is the Executive Director of Circles Salt Lake, where prior to stepping into her position in 2022, she served as a volunteer in various capacities since the chapter’s inception in 2017. Professionally, Michelle strives for positive results through the application of her abilities in leadership and effective communication. Michelle is passionate about helping people learn and grow, and possesses an aptitude for optimizing relationships and motivating others. Michelle is a Regional Coach for Circles USA's western region, supporting chapters in Utah, California, and Nebraska.

Keith Barnes is the Senior Director of Beyond the Cliff, an initiative of the nonprofit Martha O’Bryan Center focused on eliminating the benefits cliff through policy and innovative solutions to ensure individuals and families have the resources and opportunities to advance economically. Keith holds a Master's in Community Development and Action from Vanderbilt University and has served as an AmeriCorps VISTA and as a VISTA Leader.

Lynette Fields is the Executive Director of Poverty Solutions Group (PSG) that serves three counties in Central Florida. PSG is a collaborative organization committed to sustainable poverty reduction. Based on emerging best practices, PSG empowers individuals and households to achieve economic stability and engages the broader community to address systemic barriers that perpetuate community-wide poverty.

Alexander Ruder serves as an Assistant Vice President on the Atlanta Fed's Community and Economic Development team. His work covers a range of workforce development topics, including effective marginal taxation rates (benefits cliffs), trends in labor force participation, occupational mobility, and the future of work.

Annette Cummins from Circles Weber County, UT, offers a powerful perspective with the lived experience of the Cliff Effect. Annette is a former Circle Leader (and now Circles Ally) who has mentored many new Circle Leaders as they progress towards economic self-sufficiency, using her own experience and insights with navigating the benefits cliff.

Worsened by inflation, rising housing costs, unpredictable job markets, and thin margins hurting many low-income households, the Cliff Effect isn’t a rare occurrence; it's a pervasive risk that impacts those who would, could, and should be advancing in our communities. Moreover, the people who pay the highest price of these cliffs are often those already marginalized. Women, people of color, parents, and people with health or mobility challenges are all disproportionately affected by the Cliff Effect. We can’t talk about poverty alleviation without talking about fairness.

Our goal at Circles USA has always been to link people with the tools, relationships, and supports they need to move forward. Cliff Effect Day 2025 aims to help us design better pathways—ones that reward progress, reduce discouragement, and prevent “trapdoors” in policy—while supercharging chapters’ power to reverse these trends wherever they arise.

Join Us at the National Leadership Conference—Register Today!

Learn more here and join us for the whole conference or just for Cliff Effect Day. Select “Inquiry Track” to have access to the conference all day Tuesday.

Let’s come together at the Circles USA Leadership Conference in 2025 to share stories, roll up our sleeves, and commit to building systems that encourage the climb—not punish every step forward. Together, we can make sure the “cliff” becomes a bridge to thriving families and thriving communities.