While U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke has already hinted that he might vacate his post sooner, his decision to skip this year's summit of central bank heads in Jackson Hole, where he was usually the keynote speaker, sends us a message that he would be quitting sooner.

In an interview with Business Insider, President Barak Obama himself admitted that the central bank chief has "already stayed a lot longer than he wanted or he was supposed to."

According to the New York Times, Bernanke told intimates that he is already tired of running the crisis-ridden Fed for eight years.

The Jackson Hole convention has always been a pivotal event, but the highlight of it is the keynote speech, which underscores the U.S. monetary policy for the fiscal year, which in turn, impacts not only the U.S., but the entire global economic dynamics.

But this year's content keynote does not matter all. It's who is delivering. Federal Reserve Vice Chairwoman Janet Yellen will be taking Bernanke's role as the speaker, and this may send us a signal that she is, undoubtedly, the top contender to fill in Bernanke large shoes in January. And, in case Yellen gets the presidential nod, she will become the first woman to ever sit as head of the Federal Reserve. That makes her, arguably, the most powerful female policy-maker in the world.

Janet Yellen was born on Aug. 13, 1946 and received her Ph.D. in economics at Yale University in 1971. She landed a teaching stint at Harvard until she joined the Fed's Board of Governors economic team in 1977. There, she met her future husband Akerlof, himself an economist and Nobel Prize winner. From 1978 until 1980, Yellen was a faculty at the London School of Economics, before she joined the University of California, Berkeley, in 1980 until Pres. Bill Clinton nominated her to the Federal Reserve Board in 1994, a position which she held until Pres. Barack Obama appointed him as Vice Chairman of the Fed in 2010.

Yellen's claim to fame as a financial and economic genius came in July 1996. The Fed's chief that time was Alan Greenspan. The New York Times chronicled that he "saw" a chance to keep the inflation rate at zero, something which the U.S. economy hasn't enjoyed for years. After all, Greenspan explained that it's the primary duty of the central bank to stabilize prices. But Yellen, who was literary an unknown Fed governor back them, explained to Mr. Greenspan that a zero inflation is not at all good for the economy. Perhaps, Yellen argued, that an inflation of about 2 percent a year is helpful in minimizing the impact and frequency of recessions. Since sitting as Federal Reserve's vice chairwoman in 2010, Yellen has been a powerful figure in strengthening the central bank's effort in keeping inflation within the 2 percent margin and controlling unemployment. But despite all the acclamations, Yellen remains relatively unknown outside the finance and banking sector.

In an interview with CNBC, Fed governor Robert Heller praised her colleague because she "has the best resume for the job."

Yellen has been a Fed insider for so long and "she has earned the job and is well qualified and Obama is also under pressure to nominate more women, so he would have to tell his own constituency that Janet wasn't qualified and she is," he added.

But Yellen's critics are keeping their eyes on her. The New York Times noted that she might not be sufficiently concerned about the chances of accelerating inflation while the economy continues to recover and strengthen. In fact, Republican opposition in the Senate will bloc her nomination, should it ever happen, as they raise issue that the Fed's campaign will only weaken the financial markets, making it even harder to control the pace of the inflation.

Assessing Yellen's policy, David Schimizzi, a senior economist at the Charlotte, North Caroline-based Ally Financial, said, that while Yellen boasts of an impeccable record of monetary policy experience, she is, however, "perhaps too dovish," or overly concerned by unemployment.

But that doesn't taint Yellen's popularity. In fact, a third of international investors expect her to most likely take over the central bank when Bernanke steps down early next year.