The promise of a scholarship payment for taking part in a bridging course is what got her here, but it was a community of people who "saved my life" that made her stay.

A passionate advocate for the transformative impact of education, she is also an example of how challenging experiences in early life do not have to define you.

"I didn't think people like me came to university, but when I went to Kulbardi for the first time and there were people who looked like me, who talked like me, who came from the same suburb as me," she said.

These are people who understand your whole life - not just your university life."

A gifted student, the proud Wardandi Noongar woman enrolled in a Bachelor of Arts with a double major in Community Development and Politics and International Studies and excelled.

Later she went on to do her Masters' degree, researching the barriers Aboriginal women face when seeking help in situations of family violence - a situation she understood only too well from her own experience.

In October, that young woman was appointed to lead the School of Indigenous Knowledges. It's a role as Associate Professor that she never dreamed of - and she's on a mission to make it count.

"Every student that comes through here during their degree will leave with a better understanding and appreciation of Aboriginal culture and knowledge," Associate Professor Woods said.

Those students will one day take that knowledge into their workplace and the communities they are part of, making them better places for First Nations people."

They are pebbles in a pond, spreading ripples of change, as this unexpected academic leader sets out to change the world, one person at a time.

It's her great hope that universities too increasingly become places where Aboriginal people feel they belong.

"My son is now 16 and he is growing up seeing that going to university is a normal thing," she said.

"Education gives you options and the ability to choose what you want to do with your life. I tell him and my nieces and nephews that education is freedom.

"I remind them that if I can do it, anyone can do it."

Learn more about adding Indigenous Knowledges to your degree.