Janet Yellen recently finished a four-year term as Federal Reserve chair, the capstone to a distinguished career that took her from Fort Hamilton High School in Brooklyn to Brown, Yale, Harvard, and Berkeley and on to the White House Council of Economic Advisers, the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and the Fed’s Board of Governors. She was a top Fed official before, during, and after the Great Recession. As Fed chair, she began to wean the economy off extraordinary monetary stimulus and left office with unemployment at the lowest level in 17 years and inflation inching up towards the Fed’s 2 percent target. Dr. Yellen recently joined the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy at Brookings as a Distinguished Fellow in Residence in Economic Studies alongside her predecessor at the Fed, Ben Bernanke.

On Tuesday, February 27, Dr. Bernanke interviewed Dr. Yellen on her career, her time at the Fed, her observations about the current state of the economy and the challenges that confront us. Following their conversation, the two former Fed chairs took questions from the audience.