A native of Dillon, South Carolina, Rachelle Thompson is a 1992 summa cum laude graduate of Furman University, where she majored in Chemistry and received the President’s Scholarship Cup for graduating first in her class. After Furman, Rachelle attended Stanford University where she became the first African American woman at Stanford University to receive a Ph.D. in Chemistry. She was a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow and an AT&T Bell Laboratories CRFP Fellow at Stanford. She received her J.D. degree magna cum laude from the University of San Diego School of Law (2005) while working full time as a registered patent agent at a national law firm. After law school, she served as a law clerk to the late Honorable Rudi M. Brewster, Senior District Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of California, and to the Honorable Paul R. Michel, retired Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

Rachelle is a partner in the Raleigh, North Carolina office of McGuireWoods LLP, where she concentrates on intellectual property and complex commercial litigation. She has extensive experience in all aspects of patent litigation in both district court and the United States International Trade Commission. In addition to litigation, Rachelle provides counseling to clients in a variety of technologies and industries.

Rachelle is active in the community. She serves as a Children’s Minister at Berean Baptist Church of Raleigh, a mentor to youth, and a liaison to local law schools. She created the annual Charles B. Hunt “Hunt for Success” backpack drive for needy students. She is a board member of the Patent Training Foundation, an organization designed to provide diverse law students with practical skills, experience, and training before the United States Patent and Trademark Office Patent Trial and Appeal Board so that these students can pursue careers in the patent field.

Rachelle and her husband, Dr. Dwight Ulysses Thompson, have a son and daughter, Deuce and Chase.