Moby Woods was assigned the wrong gender at birth, and he spent much of his early life feeling confused about his role in his family and society. At age ten, his father began taking him to the Denver Natural History Museum, where he developed an interest in and appreciation for science and museums.  Human evolution and cultures have also been particularly interesting to him.

Woods pursued an associate's degree in sociology and completed a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology. Although the focus of the degree was cultural anthropology, half of the classes were in biology and evolutionary anthropology. Two years later, after feeling he hadn’t found the answers he was seeking, Woods began pursuing a degree in counseling psychology. Upon completing his degree, Woods realized he was a Transgender man.  This marked the beginning of his transition.

For the first five years of his counseling career, he found deep engagement and pride in his work, particularly in the field of trauma, where he often worked with transgender clients like himself. His combined degrees in anthropology and psychology helped him answer many of his childhood questions, yet new questions continued to emerge. By his seventh year, Woods recognized the early signs of provider burnout. Woods shifted his career path to address this and began a Ph.D. in Counselor Education and Supervision. However, upon starting the program, his advisor noted that his proposed dissertation topic seemed more aligned with archaeology than psychology.

After a lengthy discussion with his advisor, it became clear that despite his success in the program, he was not satisfied with the psychology focus, and a career change was necessary. Woods then applied and was accepted into the archaeology Ph.D. program at The University of New Mexico Department of Anthropology.

His advisors are Kari Schleher and Hannah Mattson. Woods will work with the material culture of the Ancestral Puebloan peoples of the Southwest at the Maxwell Museum, focusing on the archaeology of gender diversity and non-Western genders. His research will examine gender diversity in the archaeological record, utilizing material culture from the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology.