Jenny Salesa holds many achievements, but it's a personal experience for the first Tongan-born cabinet minister this country has seen that's driving her to bring change.
It's an experience she shares with the 41,000 Kiwis that are currently living with it – homelessness.
Hours after Ms Salesa, 49, was sworn in as the new Minister for Building and Construction and Minister for Ethnic Communities yesterday, the surreal element of the day's events had caught up with her in her old office.
Boxes lined the walls and tapa cloths are rolled up, also ready for the move.
"I never in my wildest dreams thought that I would get to this place, to Parliament let alone to be sworn in as a Cabinet Minister," she said.
"It's a privilege but it's a privilege that you know, I feel on my shoulders."
She says she feels immense gratitude for everyone who has helped her to get to this point, including her parents.
Being homeless is something that Ms Salesa experienced with her family as a 16-year-old moving from Tonga to New Zealand to better her education, she says, and it's this connection to the plight of thousands of New Zealanders that’s her biggest motivation.
"I can honestly say, when I serve people that come to my office in Otara and they come to me and they are homeless… it really brings back to me memories of walking in their shoes. I've walked in their boots," she says, tears welling in her eyes.
With her father the only pharmacist in Tonga for 37 years and having already passed NZ School Certificate and University Entrance, Ms Salesa had lived what she calls a privileged life.
Jenny Salesa was homeless herself in South Auckland and says the new Government has a solution for the issue.
On arrival in New Zealand, the family jumped between relatives' homes in South Auckland for three years before they could afford to rent a one-bedroom house for her parents, her brother and herself.
At one point during this period she was one of 17 people living in a two-bedroom home.
"I remember when I was a teenager helping my mum clean schools, that was how we got by," she says.
Her father became an interpreter for the court while her mother was a cleaner.
Ms Salesa felt that she wasn't fitting in at high school where she struggled with her English.
She said farewell to her parents' dream for her to further her education and dropped out.
Her first paid job was a dishwasher as Hotel DeBrett.
She says she soon figured out this was not a way she could support her family and became a banker.
After several years, she decided to go to University and found her passion for the public sector as one of the founding members of the Pacific Island Law Students Association at the University of Auckland.
Later graduating with degrees in Education and Law, she waited for the funds to be admitted to the bar.
University exposed her to government through an internship in Wellington.
Ms Salesa says she realised she could bring greater change for more people in the public sector then by helping one family at a time as a lawyer.
But still, she didn’t see politics in her future.
That bug was caught while living in the United States door-knocking for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign.
Ms Salesa says she learnt how to "mobilise people, to persuade them to enrol and then vote".
Her husband was a professor for the University of Michigan at the time and her two daughters, now 12 and 13, were born in the US.
This year Ms Salesa took out the Manukau East seat for Labour with 17,402 votes.
That's more than 12,500 more votes than her opposition claimed, National runner Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi.
It's in South Auckland that Ms Salesa was the first to draw attention to New Zealanders forced to sleep in their cars.
"It's really heart-breaking… seeing so many who live in cars, so many who live in garages, so many who are actually living in houses but they're not warm, dry and healthy."
Ms Salesa talks about Emma-Lita Bourne, the two-year-old who died from bronchopneumonia, a condition the cold and damp Housing New Zealand house she was living in contributed to.
She says she's one of many.
It's these cases Ms Salesa will be remembering as she pushes for policies like the Healthy Homes Bill to be passed as legislation, she says.
She'll also be supporting Housing Minister Phil Twyford as Labour aims to ban foreigners from buying in the existing housing market.
The Minister sees her experience with poor housing conditions as an advantage around the cabinet table, where she says she's driven to be a voice for those currently living through it.
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