It's not because Daly is just the second woman president in the 105-year history of the San Francisco Federal Reserve. What really makes Daly stand apart from her peers is the unlikely journey she took to get to the pinnacle of economics. With her family in chaos, Daly found herself helping out by icing doughnuts at her grandparents' doughnut shop in Ballwin, Missouri. Daly's family didn't have much money. But Daly almost didn't make it through college, a place she felt she didn't belong.

"A recession is not, in my judgment, right around the corner," Daly told CNN's Poppy Harlow in a Boss Files interview this week. Although Daly said the Fed is "mindful of the slowdown," she believes the recovery from the Great Recession will endure. Recession fears spiked in recent months when the US-China trade war erupted again. Critics and academic researchers argue that negative interest rates are backfiring in Europe and Japan because they crush bank profitability. Jerome Powell, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, said in September that he doesn't think the Fed would resort to negative interest rates.