Ben Bernanke hands over the reins at the Federal Reserve to Janet Yellen on Friday. The Fed's vice chair will be the first woman ever to lead the nation's central bank. It's a position many view as the second most powerful in the country.
The world of central banking is largely a man's world. But Yellen has been undeterred by such barriers since she was in high school in Brooklyn. Charlie Saydah, a former classmate, says she was probably the smartest kid in the class. Yellen was "clearly smart, and she was smart among a lot of smart kids," he says.
But she couldn't attend Stuyvesant, the competitive public school for Brooklyn's best and brightest.
"She didn't go because, you know, she was a girl," Saydah says. And back then, in the early 1960s, Stuyvesant only admitted boys. Saydah, a retired journalist, said that meant girls dominated the regular public schools, like Fort Hamilton High in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn.
Saydah says he graduated 26th out of that class. "Everyone ahead of me was a girl," he says.
Janet Yellen graduated first.
"I would have expected her to not only succeed but excel in anything she did," Saydah says.
Economy
Bernanke's Fed Legacy: A Tenure Full Of Tough Decisions