Janet Yellen

Janet Louise Yellen (born August 13, 1946) is an American economist and public official who has served as the 78th United States Secretary of the Treasury since January 2021, becoming the first woman to hold the position after Senate confirmation on a 84-15 vote. Previously, she was the 15th Chair of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors from February 2014 to February 2018, also the first woman in that role, overseeing monetary policy during the post-financial crisis recovery period characterized by prolonged low interest rates and quantitative easing. Yellen's career spans academia and government, including as Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers from 1997 to 1999 under President Bill Clinton, where she advised on fiscal policy amid the late-1990s economic expansion, and as President of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco from 2004 to 2010.

Educated at Brown University (B.A. in economics, summa cum laude, 1967) and Yale University (Ph.D. in economics, 1971), Yellen has been recognized for contributions to labor economics and macroeconomics, often aligned with New Keynesian frameworks emphasizing sticky prices and wages. Her tenure at the Federal Reserve emphasized employment maximization alongside price stability, leading to gradual rate hikes amid debates over premature tightening risks, though critics later attributed asset price inflation and low productivity growth to extended accommodative policies. As Treasury Secretary under President Joe Biden, Yellen has overseen implementation of large-scale fiscal measures like the American Rescue Plan, which totaled $1.9 trillion and coincided with subsequent inflation peaking at 9.1% in June 2022—higher than anticipated—prompting shifts from initial characterizations of price pressures as "transitory" to sustained interventions via interest rate adjustments by the Fed.

Janet Yellen was born on August 13, 1946, in the Bay Ridge neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York City, to parents of Polish Jewish descent who had immigrated to the United States prior to World War II. Her father, Julius Yellen, operated a family medical practice from an office in their home, serving a diverse local patient base, while her mother, Anna Ruth (née Blumenthal), worked as an elementary school teacher.

Janet Yellen was born on August 13, 1946, in the Bay Ridge neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, to parents of Polish Jewish ancestry. Her father, Julius Yellen, operated a family medical practice from their home, while her mother, Anna Ruth Yellen, worked as an elementary school teacher. She has one sibling, an older brother named John.