Federal Reserve Chair Janet L. Yellen At New York University's 2014 Commencement, New York, New York; May 21, 2014

Commencement Remarks

Janet Yellen — the first woman to serve as Chair of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System — addressed the graduates and guests at Yankee Stadium. Ms. Yellen received a Doctor of Commercial Science degree, honoris causa at the ceremony © NYU Photo Bureau: Gallo

Thank you, President Sexton. On behalf of the honorees, let me express my thanks to NYU. And congratulations from all of us to you, the Class of 2014, and to your families, especially your parents. This is a special day to celebrate your achievements and to look forward to your lives ahead.

Your NYU education has not only provided you with a foundation of knowledge; it has also, I hope, instilled in you a love of knowledge and an enduring curiosity. Life will continue to be a journey of discovery if you tend the fires of curiosity that burn brightly in all of us.

Such curiosity led Eric Kandel, here at NYU, to his lifetime goal, to discover the chemical and cellular basis of human memory. A few years after his graduation, he was doing research on cats. But he had the idea of focusing on an animal with a simpler, more fundamental brain: the California sea slug. His colleagues all but ridiculed him for the idea. They "knew" that the study of the lowly sea slug was irrelevant for understanding human memory. Kandel's surgically-skilled collaborator deserted him. To get up to speed on sea slugs, he had to go abroad to study. But Kandel persisted and, in 2000, his curiosity won him the Nobel Prize. It was, as you must have guessed, for deciphering the chemistry of memory in humans, as revealed by his research on sea slugs. Kandel's life, I believe, demonstrates how a persistent curiosity can help us reach ambitious goals, even with great roadblocks in the way.

A second tool for lifelong intellectual growth is a willingness to listen carefully to others. These days, technology allows us access to a great breadth of perspectives, but it also allows us to limit what voices we hear to the narrow range we find most agreeable. Listening to others, especially those with whom we disagree, tests our own ideas and beliefs. It forces us to recognize, with humility, that we don't have a monopoly on the truth.

Yankee Stadium is a natural venue for another lesson: You won't succeed all the time. Even Ruth, Gehrig and DiMaggio failed most of time when they stepped to the plate. Finding the right path in life, more often than not, involves some missteps. My Federal Reserve colleagues and I experienced this as we struggled to address a financial and economic crisis that threatened the global economy. We brainstormed and designed a host of programs to unclog the plumbing of the financial system and to keep credit flowing. Not everything worked but we kept at it, and we remained focused on the task at hand. I learned the lesson during this period that one's response to the inevitable setbacks matters as much as the balance of victories and defeats.