From Friends' Couches to Running a Federal Reserve Bank

Mary Daly grew up in Ballwin, Missouri. At 15 she left high school, which she found distant and uninteresting, at a time when her family faced health and financial emergencies and home life was chaotic. According to Forbes she stayed on friends' couches and on those of relatives, working at a doughnut shop and at Target. CNN describes her icing doughnuts at her grandparents' shop and says she had expected to become a bus driver.

A woman named Betsy, a successful professional in her thirties who knew Daly's guidance counselor, encouraged her to get a GED. Betsy also paid the 216 dollars for Daly's first college semester.

College was not smooth. Daly nearly left after failing courses, and she felt too ashamed to ask for help. She eventually went to the learning centre for tutoring, where staff supported her. In 1985 she earned a bachelor's degree in economics and philosophy from the University of Missouri-Kansas City, the first in her family to graduate from college. She went on to a master's degree at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and a PhD at Syracuse University.

She joined the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco as a research economist in 1996 and led its research department. In 2018 she became president and chief executive of the bank, the second woman to hold the post in its 105 years, and the first openly gay woman to lead any Federal Reserve bank, according to CNN. Her mentor, the former Fed chair Janet Yellen, had once led the same bank. In 2019 she gave the commencement address at Syracuse, the university where she earned her doctorate.