Jeffrey Thomas has been a cross-cultural ambassador throughout his life, starting with being a Seattle All-American Indian Dancer performing in the 1964 Seattle Chinatown parade at 6 years old. Jeffrey launched his public service career at 11 years old when he was elected to be the president of the 7th grade class for north Seattle’s Jane Addams Junior High from 1969-1970. He received the first-ever, full-time Native American student scholarship offered at north Seattle’s Lakeside High School during the 1971-72 school year, and then attended Ballard High School for 1 ½ years, whereupon he was invited to enroll as a full-time University of Washington student when he was 16 ½ years old.

Jeffrey received Bureau of Indian Affairs scholarships to attend the UW (for 20 non-stop quarters) - as a pre-med major and American Indian Studies minor during the 5 years occurring between September 1974 and August 1979 - to finally receive his Zoology B.S. degree from the University of Washington in 1985. Jeffrey’s lifetime of cultural links to his local salmon resources (including commercial gillnetting in the Strait of Juan de Fuca at age 12) led to his serving as a fisheries biologist for the Point No Point Treaty Council during 1983, and serving as a professional fisheries biologist for other local tribal fisheries organizations until he joined the Puyallup Tribal Fisheries Department as the Director of their Timber, Fish & Wildlife Program in August 1989. He has been leading the implementation of the 1987 Washington State Timber/Fish/Wildlife Agreement for the Puyallup tribal community (for almost 34 years now), ever since.

Jeffrey has been the continuous co-chair of the Washington State Timber, Fish & Wildlife “Cultural Resources Roundtable” (as of July 1994), and has been the continuous tribal representative upon the Washington Department of Natural Resources “Small Forest Landowners Advisory Committee” (as of year 2000).

Jeffrey’s professional growth includes earning a UW-Seattle Masters of Marine Affairs degree in 2016 (including his thesis subtitled “Developing a Tribal/Salmonids Social-Ecological Systems Model), and joining the Northwest Indian College/Muckleshoot Campus as a co-instructor of the 3-quarter series of cultural sovereignty courses (which all students’ are required to take to receive their degrees there).