Carolyn S. Brinkworth (born 1979) is a British-born LGBTQ community member and advocate of access and supportive workplace cultures in STEM educational institutions and in the field itself, based in the United States.

[7][8] Brinkworth received the NASA Equal Employment Opportunity Medal in 2013 for her work with the Trevor Project – a nonprofit organization focused on crisis intervention and suicide prevention for LGBTQ youth.

[10] She then started her graduate studies at the University of Southampton, assisting research on "a new high-speed camera designed to measure evolution rates in binary stars".

[10] Brinkworth moved to the United States after securing a fellowship at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory working with the Spitzer Space Telescope.

[1] She later received a master's degree in education at Claremont Graduate School, focusing on "building safer spaces for LGBT+ people in STEM departments".

[8] In 2011, Brinkworth started a volunteer program with Learning Works, a Southern California school for in-crisis students, coordinating workshops and field trips on robotics and astronomy.

Brinkworth received the 2013 NASA Equal Employment Opportunity Medal for her outstanding leadership, dedication, volunteerism, mentoring, and activism for underrepresented student groups through science education workshops and programs.