President Barack Obama will appoint Janet Yellen GRD ’71, who served as a member of the Yale Corporation from 2000 to 2006, as the first-ever chairwoman of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, according to information from White House officials to The New York Times. The announcement — which is scheduled for 3 p.m. EST this Wednesday — will not come as a major surprise, after Larry Summers, a former economic adviser to the President and the other widely rumored candidate for the job, publicly ruled himself out of contention on Sept. 15.

Yellen, who graduated summa cum laude from Brown University with an undergraduate degree in economics in 1967, began her career in academia as an assistant professor at Harvard after receiving her Ph.D in economics at Yale in 1971. After a brief stint working as an economist with the Fed Reserve, Yellen then moved to the University of California, Berkeley in 1980 where she is now the Eugene E. and Catherine M. Trefethen Professor of Business and Professor of Economics. She was the chair of the Economic Council of Advisers from 1997 to 1999 under President Bill Clinton LAW ’73 and took office as the Vice-Chairwoman of the Federal Reserve in 2010. As a member of the Federal Reserve, Yellen advocated for the central bank to play a more active role in stimulating economic growth.

Yellen will have to be confirmed by the Senate before she replaces the current leader, Ben Bernanke.