54 FORTUNE FEBRUARY/MARCH 2021
mountain range of firsts. Yellen was the only woman in her
class to earn an economics Ph.D. at Yale University, and she
was then (for quite some time) the sole female economics
professor at Harvard University. She served under Presi-
dent Bill Clinton as chair of the Council of Economic Advis-
ers (a rare non-first moment; she was the second woman to
serve in that role). In 2014, she was confirmed as the first
female chair of the Federal Reserve, under Barack Obama.
Now, under President Biden, she’s achieved yet another
title: the first woman secretary of the Treasury.
Her new job also makes Yellen the first person—of any
gender—to complete the holy trinity of the U.S. finance
circuit: Council of Economic Advisers chair, Fed chair, and
Treasury secretary.
Yellen has hit the ground running, working with Biden to
get his COVID-19 relief bill passed by Congress quickly. In a
conversation with Fortune, she underscores the new admin-
istration’s top priorities: a successful distribution of at least
100 million doses of vaccine within 100 days; reopening
schools; making sure Americans are able to remain in their
homes without fear of eviction; and providing a $1,400
stimulus check to a majority of Americans and emergency
funding for state and local governments. “It’s a priority to
help get us through the pandemic, to get our economy func-
tioning again,” she says of the stimulus legislation.
The new Treasury secretary also echoes President
Biden’s calls for both parties to dial back politics in the
interest of problem-solving. “I hope very much that we can
work in a bipartisan way, Democrats and Republicans, to
get beyond this sort of stalemate that has been around for
a number of years now,” says Yellen. “I think that many
people agree on both sides of the aisle. We need to invest
in our people and our infrastructure. We need to solve our
competitiveness.”Her decisions over the next few months will have a pro-
found impact on how quickly the economy can rebound.
The challenges facing Yellen and the rest of President
Joe Biden’s economic team are daunting. Though the U.S.
unemployment rate has fallen from its COVID peak of
14.7% last April, it plateaued at 6.7% in the final months
of 2020, nearly twice as high as a year earlier. The Federal
Reserve has already taken rates down to near zero. Thou-
sands of small businesses have closed for good during the
pandemic, which continues to ravage the country. And there
is rising concern in Washington about continued borrowing
to stimulate the economy. The U.S. national debt grew by
a stunning $7.8 trillion over the past four years under the
Trump administration, driven in part by Trump’s signature
2017 tax cuts and the $3 trillion in stimulus funding Trump
signed into law last year. Some Republicans are now using
the specter of further debt to push back against President
Biden’s proposed $1.9 trillion stimulus bill, dubbed the
“American Rescue Plan.”
Yellen is also taking the reins at a Treasury Department
that has been greatly reduced in size and capacity under
her predecessor, Steven Mnuchin. Between 2016 and 2019,
the Treasury’s main offices, including domestic finance,
economic policy, and international affairs, saw staffing
drop by about 25% as budgets fell. Those departments
control responses to the economic recovery, financial
policy, and grant programs. Mnuchin operated without
a deputy for two years and left the division of domestic
finance without an official leader. Yellen will have to bring
in a number of people, and quickly, to fill empty positions.
But it’s hard to imagine a leader with more sparkling cre-
dentials—or a better demeanor—for the work at hand than
the 74-year-old Yellen. Each career peak on her résumé
has been seemingly followed by another, higher summit—a
FEDERAL DEBT HELD BY THE PUBLIC AS A SHARE OF GDPPROJECTED1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020 2030 2040GREAT
RECESSION050100150%SOURCE: CONGRESSIONAL BUDGET OFFICECOVID-19
PANDEMICSOURCE: FEDERAL RESERVE01234567%2001 2005 2010 2015 2020JAN. 21, 2021
0.25%FEDERAL FUNDS TARGET RATE