Senate confirms Janet Yellen as US Treasury secretary

The 74-year-old will be the first woman to lead the Federal Reserve.

By JNS

The U.S. Senate confirmed former Federal Reserve chairwoman Janet Yellen on Monday as the 78th U.S. Treasury secretary and the first female to lead the 231-year-old U.S. Treasury Department.

The final tally was 84-15.

The 74-year-old, who is Jewish, will succeed Steve Mnuchin, who’s also Jewish. (As Fed chair, she succeeded Ben Bernanke, who is Jewish.)

She will be officially sworn in on Monday night and again ceremonially on Tuesday, reported Bloomberg.

Yellen was the first woman to lead the Federal Reserve, which is America’s central banking system. She served as chairwoman between 2014 and 2018.

Before leading the Federal Reserve, Yellen served as the body’s vice chair from 2010 to 2014, following an earlier term on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors and as president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.

She served as chair of the Council of Economic Advisers under U.S. President Bill Clinton, has held a litany of high-profile leadership roles with national and international economic organizations, and has forged a prolific career as a professor of economics, including as a faculty member at the University of California, Berkeley, for the last four decades.

Federal ReserveJanet YellenJoe Biden