Janet Yellen

US Treasury Secretary; Former Chair, Federal Reserve System

Janet L. Yellen is currently the United States Treasury Secretary. Previously, she was a Distinguished Fellow in Residence at the Brookings Institution’s Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy. Between February 3, 2014, and February 3, 2018, Dr. Yellen served as Chair of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and Chair of the Federal Open Market Committee, the System's principal monetary policymaking body. Prior to her appointment as Chair, Dr. Yellen served as Vice Chair of the Board of Governors, taking office in October 2010.

She served as a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System from 1994 through February 1997, and then left the Federal Reserve to become chair of the Council of Economic Advisers through August 1999. She also chaired the Economic Policy Committee of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development from 1997 to 1999. She also served as President and Chief Executive Officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco from 2004 to 2010.

Dr. Yellen graduated summa cum laude from Brown University with a degree in economics in 1967, and received her Ph.D. in Economics from Yale University in 1971. She received the Wilbur Cross Medal from Yale in 1997, an honorary doctor of laws degree from Brown in 1998, and an honorary doctor of humane letters from Bard College in 2000.

Through faculty roles at the University of California-Berkley, Harvard University, and the London School of Economics, Dr. Yellen has written on a wide variety of macroeconomic issues, while specializing in the causes, mechanisms, and implications of unemployment.