Berkeley MBA Professor Emerita to lead US Federal Reserve: MBA News

By QS Contributor Updated Aug 26, 2019

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Haas School of Business benefited from Janet Yellen’s ‘quiet competence’

Berkeley MBA Professor Emerita to lead US Federal Reserve: MBA News main image

The Berkeley MBA program at the Haas School of Business looks set to see professor emerita, Janet Yellen, confirmed as the first female chair of one of the world’s most powerful central banks, the US Federal Reserve.

Yellen, who was nominated by President Obama for the position in October, is expected to receive a full vote by the US Senate later this week confirming her appointment in replacing outgoing chairman, Ben Bernanke.

“She is a proven leader, and she's tough. Not just because she is from Brooklyn,” Obama said at the time of Janet Yellen’s nomination, adding that he saw her as ‘exceptionally qualified’ to assume such a vital role. She has served as the Federal Reserve’s vice chair since 2010.

Haas School of Business benefited from Janet Yellen’s ‘quiet competence’

Janet Yellen taught Berkeley MBA students the principles of macroeconomics (a core part of the program) for 11 semesters at Haas School of Business during a teaching career there of more than 20 years.

“At the Haas School, her colleagues and students admired her scholarship and her teaching. As a dean, I especially admired her willingness to be an institution builder. To me, her defining characteristic is quiet competence,” said the former dean at Haas School of Business, Earl ‘Budd’ Cheit. In the 1980s, Yellen was twice honored with teaching excellence awards – once for her work on the full-time Berkeley MBA, and once for her evening and weekend MBA program teaching.

Regarded as a Keynesian economist, Yellen taught at Harvard University’s economics department and at the London School of Economics before joining the Berkeley MBA faculty.

It seems that economics courses through the veins of Yellen’s family. Her husband, George A. Akerlof also taught at Berkeley and was the recipient of a Nobel Prize in economic sciences back in 2001. Their son, Robert Akerlof, is currently an economics professor at Warwick University in the UK.

Janet Yellen’s work as an economist with the Federal Reserve dates back to the late 1970s having completed a PhD at Yale University in 1971. She also served as the chair of former US president, Bill Clinton’s economic advisory council between 1997 and 1999.

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