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Janet Yellen
Also Known As Janet Louise Yellen, J.L. Yellen
Treasury Secretary of USA
Janet Louise Yellen is an American economist serving as the 78th United States Secretary of the Treasury since January 26, 2021.
She previously served as the 15th chair of the Federal Reserve from 2014 to 2018. She is the first person to hold those positions having also led the White House Council of Economic Advisers and the first woman to hold either post.
Born and raised in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, Yellen graduated from Brown University in 1967 and earned a Ph.D. in economics from Yale University in 1971. She taught as an assistant professor at Harvard University from 1971 until 1976 when she began working for the Federal Reserve Board as a staff economist from 1977 to 1978 before joining the faculty of the London School of Economics from 1978 to 1980. Yellen is professor emeritus at the Haas School of Business and the University of California, Berkeley, where she has been a faculty member since 1980 and became the Eugene E. and Catherine M. Trefethen Professor of Business and Professor of Economics.
Yellen served as a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors from 1994 to 1997 and was nominated to the position by President Bill Clinton, who then named her chair of the Council of Economic Advisers from 1997 to 1999. She subsequently returned to academia before being appointed president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco from 2004 until 2010. Afterward, President Barack Obama chose her to replace Donald Kohn as vice chair of the Federal Reserve from 2010 to 2014 before nominating her to succeed Ben Bernanke as chair of the Federal Reserve three years later. She had one of the shortest tenures in that position and was succeeded by Jerome Powell after President Donald Trump refused to renominate her for a second term. Following her resignation from the Federal Reserve, Yellen joined the Brookings Institution as a distinguished fellow in residence from 2018 until 2020, when she once again went into public service.
On November 30, 2020, then-President-elect Joe Biden nominated Yellen to serve as secretary of the treasury; she was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on January 25, 2021, and took office the next day.
On April 22, 1994, President Bill Clinton announced his intention to nominate Yellen as a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. The nomination was confirmed in the full United States Senate by a vote of 94–6. On August 12, 1994, Yellen was appointed to a full 14-year term and assumed the seat vacated by Republican Wayne Angell.
Upon her confirmation as chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, she resigned as a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System on February 17, 1997.
On December 20, 1996, Yellen joined the Clinton administration as chair of President Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers (CEA), replacing Joseph Stiglitz in office. Yellen was unanimously confirmed by the Senate on February 13, 1997, thereby becoming the second woman to serve as chief economic advisor to the president after Laura Tyson. While serving within the Administration, she chaired the OECD Economic Policy Committee from 1997 to 1999.
In June 1999, Yellen announced that she was stepping down from the CEA for personal reasons and would return to teaching at UC Berkeley. It was reported that President Clinton asked her to take over from Alice Rivlin, the central bank's vice chairwoman – an offer she turned down
Early Life
Yellen was born on August 13, 1946, to a family of Polish Jewish ancestry in the Bay Ridge, Brooklyn neighborhood of New York City, and grew up there. Her mother was Anna Ruth (née Blumenthal; 1907–1986), an elementary school teacher who gave up her teaching job to become a stay-at-home mother. Her father was Julius Yellen (1906–1975), a family physician who worked from the ground floor of their house. Janet has an older brother, John (born 1942), a program director for archaeology at the National Science Foundation.
Yellen attended the local Fort Hamilton High School, where she was an honor society member and participated in the booster club, the psychology club, and the history club. She also served as editor-in-chief of The Pilot, the school newspaper, which continued its 13-year streak as the first-place winner of the prestigious Columbia Scholastic Press Association contest under her leadership. She earned a National Merit commendation letter and was admitted to a selective science honors program at Columbia University to voluntarily study mathematics on Saturday mornings.
Yellen enrolled at Pembroke College in Brown University, initially intending to study philosophy. During her freshman year, she switched her planned major to economics and was particularly influenced by professors George Herbert Borts and Herschel Grossman. In the spring of 1964, she also joined the business staff of The Brown Daily Herald, but soon afterward left the paper to focus on her academic studies. Yellen graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa with a bachelor's in economics from Brown University in 1967 and earned her master's and Ph.D. in economics from Yale University in 1971.
Yellen is married to George Akerlof, an economist who is a university professor at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University and Koshland Professor of Economics Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, as well as 2001 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences laureate. Their son Robert Akerlof was born in 1981 and is also an economist.
Yellen and Akerlof have often collaborated on research, including topics such as poverty, unemployment and a paper on the costs of out-of-wedlock childbearing.
Yellen has an estimated net worth of $20 million, accrued from stock holdings, speaking engagements, and various government and academic positions. In February 2021, she divested holdings in corporations including Pfizer, ConocoPhillips and AT&T, among others, when she assumed the public office of U.S. Treasury Secretary.
Education
- Graduate summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa with a Bachelor's in Economics - Brown University
- Masters and Ph.D. in Economics - Yale University
Career
- Harvard University - Assistant Professor (from 1971)
- Federal Reserve Board - Staff Economist (from 1976)
- London School of Economics - Member of Faculty (from 1978)
- Professor Emeritus - Haas School of Business
- Professor Emeritus - University of California, Berkeley
- Eugene E. and Catherine M. Trefethen Professor of Business and Professor of Economics - University of California
Other Activites
In October 2020, the Group of Thirty's Steering Committee Working Group on Climate Change and Finance, which Yellen co-chaired with Mark Carney, prepared a report that developed a robust and inclusive strategy to amplify and mainstream the global transition to a net zero emissions economy. The study calls upon governments, businesses, and financial institutions to assess climate risks and supports a phase-in of carbon pricing to accelerate a shift to carbon neutrality.
In a speech delivered to the Yale economics department reunion in April 1999, Yellen discussed her views on the application of Keynesian economics to policymaking. She stated that while most economists "appreciate the value of markets and incentives," Yalies "can recognize when they are not operating correctly and have higher concern for policies to remedy them."
Recognition
New York-1986–1987-John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Guggenheim Fellowship
Connecticut-2000–2006-Yale Corporation Alumni Fellow
California-2003–2004-Western Economic Association International President
Tennessee-2004–2005-American Economic Association Vice President
Served with Angus Deaton
California-2013–present University of California, Berkeley Berkeley Fellow
Tennessee-2020–2021-American Economic Association President