Judy Gillett-Ferguson (nee Goss) was born at Petts Wood, Kent, south of London, on 7 November 1939. Her father Joseph (Joe) Goss was State Secretary of the Amalgamated Metal Workers & Shipwright's Union, then the Amalgamated Engineering Union before becoming a founding member of the Socialist Party of Australia. She was a member of the Communist Party of Australia, where she met Pete Thomas at a CPA National Congress in Sydney in the early 1970s. In 1979 her comments were taped for papers on 'Women in the Labor Movement and CPA', and in 1987 produced 'Women and Socialist Renewal' which dealt with women in the CPA and trade unions. Judy worked as a teacher and became principal at the Reading Centre until it closed in 1980. From 1981 to 1983 she was deputy principal at Elizabeth West Primary School and in 1984 she started as principal at Brahma Lodge Primary School with Glyn Turner as deputy principal. Brahma Lodge was one of the first South Australian Primary Schools to have both a female principal and deputy principal. She wrote a number of textbooks and teacher's guides, and during the 1980s she was involved in the campaign to save a Reading Development Centre, a survey on stress factors for teachers and an Education Department review of primary education.