She is 1.52 meters tall, and she is definitely not a beauty in the tall Western society; her father runs a clinic, is a family doctor, and her mother is a housewife; such a family is not a family of dignitaries! However, as a grassroots background, she has been favored by four US presidents, successively serving as chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, chairman of the Federal Reserve, and secretary of the Treasury. For her, you can use Diao Deyi's comment on A Qing's sister-in-law in the modern Peking Opera "Shajiabang": "This woman is unusual." She is the 78-year-old US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who has just finished her visit to the mainland.
Everyone's success is not accidental. This is especially true for those who do not have an economic foundation and social resources, and who rely on personal struggle from the bottom of society. Yellen grew up watching her father in the basement for patients who couldn't afford to pay for their medical bills because they were unemployed. I often see how my mother is careful about family life. I have also heard and witnessed how difficult it is for people living at the bottom of society to be unemployed and have no economic income. Therefore, since childhood, he has been determined to be a person who is useful for the development of the national economy and the reduction of unemployment.
Although she is not tall, she has a high IQ. From elementary school to high school, his grades in all subjects have always been among the best. In the impression of his classmates, he is a smart and persistent student.
In 1963, at the age of 17, she was admitted to the economics department of Brown University. may have something to do with her determination since she was a child, after taking a basic course in economics, she fell in love with this subject at first sight. She later said: "Economics has a systematic way of analyzing problems, and the connection between economics and people's livelihood, and the concern for people's welfare, life and how to make it better, made her fall in love with this subject." ”
Hobbies and interests are the best motivation for learning knowledge. In her favorite field of expertise, she is at home. After graduating with a bachelor's degree in 1967, he entered Yale University for a master's degree and a doctorate. Four years later, at the age of 25, she graduated with a Ph.D. in 1971 and went on to work as a teaching assistant at Harvard University.
Six years later, she was selected to join the Federal Reserve to study international monetary policy. Here, I met my husband, gained love, achieved marriage, and established a family. Then she left the Federal Reserve with her husband to teach in England for two years, then settled in San Francisco and became a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. I thought that I would be able to work and live as planned, but unexpectedly, in 1994, fate changed, and President Clinton asked her to serve as a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.
Since then, he has left the church and entered politics. Three years later, Clinton made her chairman of the White House Council on economic policy, advisory and advisory boards. After Obama took office, he made her chairman of the Federal Reserve. Although during Trump's presidency, she was not re-elected as chairman of the Federal Reserve, but joined the Brookings Institution as a senior fellow at the Center for Fiscal and Monetary Studies, returning to academia. But in her State of the Union address, Trump boasted about her achievements: "2.4 million jobs, a 45-year low unemployment rate, and a record $8 trillion in stock market trading...... Each of them has Yellen's credit." She has been hailed as the "woman behind the scenes" of US President Donald Trump.
In 2021, President Biden made her the Secretary of the Treasury again, making her the first female Treasury Secretary since the founding of the United States, not to mention that she is already a 75-year-old lady at this time. She is the only person in the talent-rich United States who has been at the helm of three key sectors of the economy (the Economic Policy Council, the Federal Reserve, and the Treasury Department). She is also ranked third among the 100 most influential women in the world.
The reason why she has been able to live a beautiful life in the past 78 years is mainly due to the following three points;
One is persistence. Whether she is a student, a professor, or a major leader in several economic departments, she can be conscientious and responsible, and do her work to the extreme, so that her reputation is far and wide. When she was nominated by President President Ma to be vice chairman of the Federal Reserve in 2010 and defeated former Treasury Secretary Summers to become Fed chairman in 2014, more than 500 top economists signed a letter to Obama expressing support for Yellen, arguing that she would make the U.S. financial system safer. Yellen did lead the U.S. economy through four years of stability.
Even in family life, she was a good wife and mother. In his autobiography published on the Nobel Foundation's website, her husband, Akerloff, wrote: "I met Yellen at the Federal Reserve, and we immediately fell in love with each other and decided to get married. Not only are we very compatible, but we are also very consistent in our views on macroeconomics. She left the Federal Reserve with her husband and taught at the London School of Economics in England and then at the University of California, Berkeley.
The second is simplicity. She comes from the bottom of the society, and she is realistic in her dealings with people, unassuming, unassuming, and unpretentious. After arriving in Guangzhou on April 6 this year, she carried a backpack on her shoulder and a computer bag, like an old lady who said she would go and travel. After getting off the plane, I walked in a relaxed and natural way, talking and laughing.
No one carries a bag, no one holds an umbrella, and there is no luxurious scene of hugging each other, so I went directly to the century-old Taotaoju restaurant in Guangzhou to eat. There is no need for any high-end and gorgeous banquets, nor does it need to be accompanied by relevant personnel, so they can order food with the entourage and ordinary people.
When I went to Guangzhou last month, I dined on the second floor of Tao Tao Ju and tasted the dishes she ordered, such as red rice sausage and prawn dumplings. It is said that she still paid the bill herself. Even when I arrived in Beijing, I went straight to the Sichuan restaurant Lao Chuanban, and the dishes I ordered were also very popular, so I ate them with relish.
Based on her performance in China and around the world in July last year, this is what she has always done, and there is no such thing as a show.
The third is to be calm. Both her classmates and colleagues say that "being calm and calm in situations is a major characteristic of Yellen." She is a humble person, able to stay calm under pressure, and always aware of her decisions, even in the face of severe uncertainty. Even in the event of an earthquake, it is possible to stay in danger. On October 17, 1989, the Loma Prieta earthquake spread through the San Francisco area, killing dozens and injuring thousands. While everyone fled in panic, she was at her desk, quite calm. People say that women are emotional creatures who are impulsive in their words and actions, but Yellen is not. She speaks quite rigorously and does things quite steadily, so that she will be praised and reused by four presidents.
What is even more valuable is that she did not just serve the privileged, but has long tended to fight unemployment, often expressing concerns in public about how economic policies affect ordinary people, especially the vulnerable. She has also been an advocate for the use of economic policies to close racial and gender disparities. It can be seen that she is indeed an extraordinary woman.