Janet Yellen, Born in Brooklyn, Serves as Secretary of the Treasury

 When Janet Yellen, who was born in Brooklyn, was sworn in as the country’s first female secretary of the treasury on Jan. 20, she also became the first person in American history to lead the three most powerful economic bodies in the Federal government of the United States: the Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve, and the White House Council of Economic Advisers.

  Born at Maimonides Medical Center in 1946, Yellen grew up in Bay Ridge and graduated as the valedictorian from  Fort Hamilton High School in 1962.

  Yellen then attended college at Brown University and graduate school at Yale University, where she was the only woman of 24 economists to get their PhDs in 1971.

   Yellen met her husband, George Akerlof, who won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2001, in the cafeteria of the Fed, where they both worked. 

   Yellen later taught at the University of California, Berkeley, and served on the Federal Reserve Board in many ways until 2013, when she replaced Ben Bernanke as the Chair of the Federal Reserve.

   Yellen has said that her father, who was a doctor and who taught her about the value of hard work, inspired her to become an economist.

       “I was concerned about the toll of unemployment on people, families, and communities,” Yellen said. “And I’ve spent my career trying to make sure people can work and achieve the dignity and self-worth that comes with it.”