He announced on January 28, 2015, that he would retire from the company and leave his position on March 1, 2015, and was succeeded by Steve Easterbrook, the senior executive vice president and chief brand officer.
[2] He is currently the CEO of Cleveland Avenue, an investment group and accelerator that focuses on building new food, beverage, and restaurant concepts, which he founded in 2015.
[7] Because of gang violence and crime that began to spread through the area in the late 1960s and 1970s, he was later moved by his grandmother to live with relatives in Indianapolis, where he attended North Central High School.
[10] Thompson received a call from a McDonald's recruiter who was looking for an engineer to design "robotics, control circuitry and feedback loops".
[citation needed] By January 2005, Thompson, now an Executive Vice President, began to serve as Chief Operations Officer (COO) of all US restaurants.
However Thompson was not the first choice as successor, he was third having won the position when executives Michael Roberts and Ralph Alvarez left McDonald's in 2006 and 2009 respectively.