Brook Thompson

Brook M Thompson is from the Yurok and Karuk Tribes of Northern California. Brook is a Ph.D. candidate, scientist, engineer, author, activist, and artist. 

Growing up Brook spent her time fishing for salmon on the Klamath River like her ancestors before her when she witnessing the heart-breaking 2002 fish kill, the largest fish kill in West Coast history. The death of tens of thousand salmon is what has motivated her career in water engineering and activism. In 2020 Brook graduated Portland State University's Honors College with a bachelor of science in civil engineering with a minor in political science, in 2022 she received a master’s in environmental engineering from Stanford University with a focus in water resources and hydrology. 

Brook now attends UC Santa Cruz working on her Ph.D. in environmental studies with a designated emphasis in Coastal Science and Policy where she researches Spring Chinook Salmon and Restoration in the Klamath River with interdisciplinary social science, natural science, and policy methodology. While attending university full time over the last decade she has also interned at the Yurok Tribe, the City of Portland, the United States Senate, the California State Water Resource Control Board, a current board member of Save California Salmon, and is an international public speaker. 

Among other accolades Brook is a 2024 NDN Collective Change Maker, a 2023 Ford Foundation Fellow, a 2022 Native Journalism Award Winner, a 2020 United National Indian Tribal Youth 25 Under 25 Recipient, was the 2017 Undergraduate American Indian Graduate Center Student of the Year, and a Gates Millennium Scholar. In 2025 her Children's Book about her life titled, "I Love Salmon and Lampreys" was published. ​

Thompson’s goal is to uplift the nexus of Native American knowledge, engineering, public policy, and social action to transform how water rights, restoration, education, and climate change are approached at the local and international levels.