In 2004, Lisa Jackson Pulver broke new ground by becoming the first Indigenous person to receive a PhD in medicine from the University of Sydney.

Now, just three years on, she has established a name for herself as one of the nation’s most prominent researchers and advocates in the sphere of Indigenous health.

Lisa’s remarkable journey to success began with a childhood dream of becoming a doctor. But at the age of 14, she ran away from home and so did not finish high school, which put studying medicine out of reach.

Recognising the need to gain qualifications – “I understood that learning was the only thing people could not take away from me,” she says – Lisa trained as a nurse. She moved on to work in a number of other occupations, including teaching literacy, before deciding to focus on pursuing her ambition of becoming a doctor. In 1990, Lisa wrote a letter to the University of Sydney expressing her interest in enrolling in medicine.

“To my absolute surprise, I not only received a response from the Koori Centre but also from the Faculty of Medicine inviting me to go in for an interview,” she explains. Lisa impressed the panel of academics with her determination to succeed and was offered a place in what was then the undergraduate medical program.

Three years into her degree, Lisa found herself struggling with the challenges of balancing her studies with the demands of work and family life. As she contemplated discontinuing her degree, Lisa remembers having a conversation with Professor Charles Kerr, now Emeritus Professor Charles Kerr, which would change the course of her career.

“Charles, who had been one of my lecturers the previous year, supported my decision to defer medicine for a year, but he didn’t want me to stop studying all together,” she recalls. “He suggested that I enrol in a public health degree.”

Following her mentor’s advice, Lisa enrolled in a Master in Public Health and quickly realised she held a passion for the subject. Two years later, she entered the PhD program, writing a thesis centred on the formulas for better health outcomes for Indigenous people. During this time she also undertook the Public Health Officer training program and attained a Graduate Diploma in Applied Epidemiology.

Lisa initially worked as an epidemiologist within the NSW Department of Health before being offered an academic post at the University of New South Wales in 2003. As she explains, her time as a student at the University of Sydney played a pivotal role in helping her to realise her professional ambitions.

“Researchers are grown, and Sydney University helped to grow me into the researcher I am today,” says Lisa.

“The panel that offered me a place in medicine, the Koori Centre, Charles Kerr and the staff at the School of Public Health all did an extraordinary job of creating an environment where people like me and other Aboriginal people could achieve what we wanted to achieve.

“Sydney University has a very strong history of supporting Aboriginal people. Sydney also graduated the first Indigenous solicitor – Charlie Perkins – and it was from the grounds of the University that the Freedom Rides set out.”

Today, Lisa is Associate Professor in Aboriginal Health (Development and Research) at the University of New South Wales and heads the Muru Marri Indigenous Health Unit which she co-founded. She is involved in contributing to Indigenous public health policy at a state, national and international level. In 2004, Lisa addressed the UK House of Commons on the state of Australian Indigenous health, an experience she describes as a “defining moment” of her career.

Simultaneously, Lisa also works at a grass-roots level to provide more opportunities for Indigenous people. One of her most successful initiatives has been to establish an innovative philanthropic program at the University of New South Wales, funded in part by the sale of Indigenous art, which has provided 11 full scholarships for Indigenous students to study medicine.

“My path has been fairly steep, but it has enabled me to do all sorts of things that needs to be done given the diabolical state that Aboriginal people remain in today,” Lisa says.

“I think the most important thing I have learnt through all my experiences is that there is a need for patience. In one year, it may seem as though you can’t get much done. But when you look back over a body of work, things have happened.”