FT年度女性评选奖项之二 耶伦

The rise of some careers – those of Lawrence Summers and Barack Obama, for example – is meteoric. They speed, seemingly unhindered by any obstacle, towards the positions of highest power.

有一种人在事业上可谓平步青云，例如劳伦斯•萨默斯(Lawrence Summers)和巴拉克•奥巴马(Barack Obama)：他们似乎没有遇到任何阻碍，就迅速坐上了最高权力的宝座。

Janet Yellen belongs in a different category. Her rise was slow but implacable, and this year, at the age of 67, she overcame the president’s preference for his former adviser Summers to win the most powerful economic job of all: chair of the US Federal Reserve.

但珍妮特•耶伦(Janet Yellen)属于另一种人。她的事业上升速度缓慢，但势不可挡。今年，67岁的她力克奥巴马总统对前经济顾问萨默斯的偏爱，赢得了代表经济领域权力巅峰的职位：美联储(Fed)主席。

Accepting the nomination from Obama with the broadest of smiles, in her Brooklyn accent, the first woman to hold the post showed the determination to tackle high unemployment that has been her calling card as Fed vice-chair.

在接受奥巴马总统提名时，笑容舒展的耶伦操持着她的布鲁克林口音，表达了自己解决失业率高居不下问题的决心——这是她担任美联储副主席期间广为人知的一张名片。耶伦是美联储的首位女性掌门人。

“While we have made progress, we have further to go,” she said. “Too many Americans still can’t find a job and worry about how they will pay their bills and provide for their families.”

“尽管我们取得了一些进展，但前面还有一段路要走。”她说，“还有太多的美国人仍没有找到工作，仍愁着如何才能付掉各种账单、才能供养家庭。”

Yellen grew up in a working-class area of New York but her family was well-provided for: her father was a doctor who worked from the ground floor of their terraced house. Academically, she excelled. It was traditional for the editor of the school newspaper to interview the student graduating top of the year so Yellen ended up interviewing herself.

耶伦在纽约一个工薪阶层社区长大，但她的家庭条件不错：她父亲是医生，工作地点就设在他们家所住的排屋一楼。耶伦学业出众。她是校报的主编，按照校报的传统，主编要采访当年毕业生中的第一名，结果耶伦自己采访了自己。

She went to Brown University and then on to Yale for a doctorate. Her professor was James Tobin, the future Nobel laureate who refined Keynesian economics in the 1950s and 1960s but was also intensely interested in the real world of policy. “He encouraged his students to do work that was about something,” Yellen said of Tobin after he died. “Work that would not only meet a high intellectual standard but would improve the wellbeing of mankind.”

她先是就读于布朗大学(Brown University)，后来又赴耶鲁(Yale)攻读博士学位，师从后获得诺贝尔经济学奖的詹姆斯•托宾(James Tobin)。托宾于上世纪五六十年代改良了凯恩斯的经济学理论，同时也极为关注现实世界的政策。“他鼓励自己的学生做点实事，”耶伦在托宾去世后说，“这些事不仅要在学术上达到高标准，而且要有助于增进人类的福祉。”

Her first tour at the Fed, working as an economist, came in 1977 where she also met her husband-to-be, George Akerlof, in the central bank’s cafeteria. “We liked each other immediately and decided to get married,” wrote Akerlof after he won the 2001 Nobel Prize in economics. “Not only did our personalities mesh perfectly but we have also always been in all but perfect agreement about macroeconomics.”

耶伦第一次加入美联储是在1977年，担任经济学家。也是在美联储的咖啡厅里，她遇到了未来的丈夫乔治•阿克洛夫(George Akerlof)。“我们一见钟情，然后决定结婚，”阿克洛夫在获得2001年诺贝尔经济学奖后写道，“我们不仅性格非常契合，而且在宏观经济学上也一直能达成几乎完美的共识。”

A successful, but not stellar, career in academia followed at the University of California, Berkeley. The couple collaborated on research and Yellen was a popular teacher at the university’s Haas School of Business.

这对夫妇随后在加州大学伯克利分校(University of California, Berkeley)开始了一段成功的执教生涯，但彼时他们的成就还不太耀眼。耶伦与丈夫在研究上相互协助，而她也是该校哈斯商学院(Haas School of Business)颇具人气的教师。

Her destiny seemed to be that of any other university professor. But Yellen’s qualities – her interest in policy, the meticulous way she prepared and thought about problems and her social skills – had been noted by colleagues, some of whom were close to, or part of, the Clinton administration.

那时，等待耶伦的命运看上去与其他大学教授没什么两样。但在那时，她的才干——对政策的兴趣、预备和思考问题时的一丝不苟、以及社交能力——已经引起了一些同事的注意。他们中的一些人跟克林顿政府关系密切、或就在克林顿政府内任职。

In 1994, aged 48, Yellen became a Fed governor and over the next 20 years there followed a succession of policy jobs: chairman of President Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers, president of the San Francisco Fed and, finally, vice-chair of the Fed itself.

1994年，当时48岁的耶伦成为美国联邦储备委员会委员。在接下来的20年里，她又相继担任了若干与政策相关的职务，包括克林顿总统时期的白宫经济顾问委员会(Council of Economic Advisers)主席，旧金山联邦储备银行(San Francisco Fed)行长，以及美联储副主席。

Her ascent has not been entirely smooth. The period in the White House was difficult, say colleagues from that time, as she ran up against political operators. But that experience also taught her steeliness. Good luck to any official who “forgot” to invite her to an important meeting.

耶伦的升迁之路并非一帆风顺。据她过去在白宫的同事讲，耶伦那时的日子并不好过，她经常在操纵政治的人那里碰钉子。但那段经历也让她炼成了钢铁般的意志。那些曾“忘记”邀请她参加某个重要会议的官员，祝你们好运。

Yellen’s arrival will improve the Obama administration’s dismal record of appointing women to top economic jobs. She will join Christine Lagarde, the head of the International Monetary Fund, at the helm of the global economy. The two are friends and can be spotted sitting next to each other at events such as the annual Kansas City Fed conference.

耶伦出任美联储主席，将改善奥巴马政府在任命女性担任经济领域重要职务方面的糟糕记录。她将跟随国际货币基金组织(IMF)主席克里斯蒂娜•拉加德(Christine Lagarde)的脚步，加入世界经济掌舵者的行列。她们俩是朋友，在堪萨斯城联邦储备银行的年度会议等活动中，可以看到两人坐在一起。

“I’m overjoyed,” said Lagarde, when asked about the selection of Yellen. The new Fed chair, she added, is “as good as you can get”.

当被问及对耶伦被选中的感想时，拉加德说：“我非常高兴。”她补充道，这位新任美联储主席是“现有的最佳人选”。