Join us at the Social Development Commission (SDC)’s 2022 Summit on Poverty from October 25-27, 2022 happening virtually and in-person at the Wisconsin Center.
Our goal is to expand learning, engagement, and advocacy by providing access to community action agencies, human service, government, and education professionals nationwide as we address our 2022 Summit on Poverty theme: In Pursuit of Resilience & Self-Determination.
The COVID-19 global pandemic is still a clear & present threat. As a country, we are still experiencing an economic crisis and a reality of racial and economic disparities. The 2022 theme for our annual Summit on Poverty seeks evidence-based, innovative strategies that focus on resiliency and determination.
Many organizations were forced to confront and attack barriers that threatened their ability to serve impacted people and stay open. As a collective, we remain focused on our commitment to provide access to vital tools and resources that help impacted people establish pathways out of and away from poverty.
This year we share new efforts and initiatives designed to study, analyze & engage & inform. We will draw attention to the structural underpinnings of poverty, and we believe that a continuous, well-informed, and intellectually honest dialogue that will affect change can occur.
We will also seek to collaborate with key stakeholders and changemakers to identify, examine, and reflect on opportunities that nurture more comprehensive efforts to respond to the needs of impacted people during times of crisis.
We are looking forward to seeing you at the 2022 Summit on Poverty happening October 25 – 27, 2022.
Want to join the fight to eradicate poverty? That’s precisely what you will be doing when you become a sponsor of the Summit on Poverty. Click here to download the 2022 Summit on Poverty Sponsorship Book!
Agenda
Day 1 | October 25, 2022
8:30am – 4:30pm
Day 2 | October 26, 2022
8:30am – 4:30pm
Day 3 | October 27, 2022
8:30am – 12:00pm
12:00pm – 3:30pm – SDC Annual Meeting

2022 Summit on Poverty Keynote Speakers
The Summit on Poverty conference will feature a variety of dynamic speakers. We are pleased to announce our keynote speakers below! Stay tuned for more speaker and event announcements.
Georgia State Representative Park Cannon is one of two openly queer lawmakers in the Georgia General Assembly and its youngest. The Democratic lawmaker was arrested and removed from the Georgia Capitol after she knocked on the door to the governor’s office during his signing of SB 202, a restrictive law that limits voting rights in the state.
Arturo Menefee, PhD is the Director of Leadership Development for The University of Alabama Center for Economic Development. He has more than fifteen years of professional and academic experience in leadership, community, diversity, health, workforce and economic development.
Jonathan Metzl MD, PhD is an acclaimed physician, psychiatrist, and sociologist who speaks and writes on a range of topics including guns, gun violence, and race, gender, and social justice in healthcare. During his keynote presentation, Dr. Metzl will discuss COVID-19 and how the pandemic has reshaped our world.
John Meurer, MD, MBA, PhD is Professor of Community Health and Pediatrics and Director of the Institute for Health & Equity at the Medical College of Wisconsin. For 12 years, he has led the Institute of 150 faculty, staff and doctoral students that does research and graduate education in biostatistics, epidemiology, social sciences, global health, bioethics, medical humanities, public and community health, genetic counseling, and precision medicine.
Dorothy Roberts, PhD is an internationally recognized scholar, public intellectual, and social justice advocate. She has written and lectured extensively on race, gender, and class inequities in U.S. institutions and has been a leader in transforming public thinking and policy on reproductive freedom, child welfare, and bioethics.
SDC Annual Meeting Keynote:
Rosa Alicia Clemente is an award-winning organizer, speaker, political commentator, producer, independent journalist, scholar-activist and former vice presidential candidate. A leading voice of her generation, the Bronx-born Black-Puerto Rican is frequently sought out for her insight and commentary on Afro-Latinx identity, Black and Latinx liberation movements, police violence, colonialism in Puerto Rico, hip-hop feminism, third-party politics and more. In 2008, Clemente made herstory when she became the first Afro-Latina to run for vice president of the United States on the Green Party ticket. She and her running mate, Cynthia McKinney, are to this date the only women of color ticket in U.S. presidential history. Since then, Clemente has continued to be a powerhouse. She is the creator of Know Thy Self Productions, under which she has organized multiple national tours; PR on the Map, an independent, unapologetic, Afro-Latinx-centered media collective founded in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria; and the Black Diasporic Organizing Project, a nonprofit dedicated to combating anti-Blackness within the wider Latinx community. Recently, she was also associate producer on the 2021 Oscar-winning biographical drama film Judas and the Black Messiah. She is currently completing her PhD at the W.E.B. DuBois Center at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.