“In government institutions, as in teaching, you need to inspire confidence. To achieve credibility, you have to very clearly explain what you are doing and why. The same principles apply to business." -- Yellen on her leadership philosophy.
"Proud to have been the first woman to hold the job," and wishes more women would join her, saying "it's distressing to see the few women who have reached the highest levels in the kind of work...I do." — Yellen on her last day in office.
Ultimately to become the first female to lead a major central bank anywhere in the world, Janet Yellen was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1946 to a middle class family, Yellen attended Fort Hamilton High School, where she excelled in many subjects serving as editor-in-chief of her school newspaper. She was valedictorian of the graduating class of 1963 and was granted Phi Beta Kappa.
She graduated summa cum laude from Pembroke, Brown University’s women’s college with a degree in economics in 1967. She then went on to receive her Ph.D. in Economics from Yale University becoming Dr. Yellen. Other academic honors include the Wilbur Cross Medal from Yale, an honorary doctor of laws degree from Brown, and an honorary doctor of humane letters from Bard College.
Dr. Yellen was an Assistant Professor at Harvard University from 1971-1976, a staff economist for the Federal Reserve Board from 1977-1978 (it was during her first turn at the Fed that she met her husband, Nobel Prize-winning economist George Akerlof). She was a faculty member at the London School of Economics and Political Science from 1978-1980 before joining the faculty of Berkeley where she served until 1994.
She then re-joined the Federal Reserve Board from 1994 to 1997 when she was appointed by President Bill Clinton to serve as the Chair of the Council of Economic Advisors. She was Chair of the Economic Policy Committee of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development at the same time. She has served as President of the Western Economic Association, Vice President of the American Economic Association and a Fellow of the Yale Corporation. She is a member of both the Council on Foreign Relations and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
She's written on a wide variety of macroeconomic issues, and is an expert in the causes, mechanisms, and implications of unemployment. In her free time, she reads books on economics and collects stamps.
In October 2015, Janet Yellen was named the most influential person in the world by Bloomberg Markets
Career at the Federal Reserve
Dr. Yellen was Vice Chair of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System starting in 2010. This four-year term coincided with a 14-year term as a Board member. She was the president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco from 2004-2010 showing remarkable insight into the country's economic situation as one of the few economists to forecast the housing crisis of 2008.
President Obama nominated Yellen to replace Ben Bernanke after he announced his retirement. She sailed through her nomination review by the Senate Banking panel on November 14, 2013 and easily won Senate confirmation (by a vote of 56-26).
Yellen then became the first woman to serve as Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board where she was responsible for serving as the chair of the Federal Open Markets Committee (FOMC), which sets short-term U.S. monetary policy to promote the goals of maximum employment, stable prices and moderate long term interest rates.
She has been credited with helping engineer a very strong economic recovery and her tenure was by most measures a very successful one with unemployment falling from 6.7 percent to 4.1 percent and core inflation staying steady below 2 percent. By the end of 2017, the economy was growing at 3.1 percent and unemployment was at record lows The nation's gross domestic product increased from $16 trillion to $17 trillion. Additionally, the Fed chief engineered a very soft landing by slowly walking back measures that had been in place since the financial collapse of 2008, making clear her intentions to allow a certain amount of assets to mature without being replace. The Dow Jones Industrial Average set 204 record highs during her tenure.
While in the public eye, Yellen followed a cautious approach, using meticulously researched data and a technocratic manner to minimize surprise announcements or other releases that could roil the markets.
Despite her role in helping to shrink the national unemployment rate, Yellen announced her resignation in November 2017, after President Donald Trump revealed he would not nominate her for a second term even after doing what many termed a “fantastic job” as Fed Chair.
She now serves as the Distinguished Fellow in Residence at the Economic Studies program of the Brookings Institution. She is affiliated with the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy.
