Diane Thompson

Deputy Director and Chief Advocacy Officer

Diane Thompson is deputy director and chief advocacy officer at the National Consumer Law Center. 

She previously served as a senior advisor to the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), where she also had served as the acting assistant director of the Office of Regulations in 2019, the deputy assistant director of the Office of Regulations from 2016-2019, and managing counsel with primary responsibility for mortgage servicing and the TILA-RESPA Integrated Disclosures from 2014-2016. She also served on the Biden-Harris Agency Review Team for the CFPB in 2020.

In 2019, Diane founded the Consumer Rights Regulatory Engagement and Advocacy Project (CRREA) to increase inclusive and informed public engagement in regulatory work. CRREA works to transfer knowledge about effective regulatory advocacy on behalf of racial and economic justice across impacted communities and their advocates.

Diane was previously of counsel to NCLC. She was the co-author of the NCLC treatise Truth in Lending, and a contributing author to Mortgage Lending. She is co-author of the NCLC report, At a Crossroads: Lessons from the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP). She has published several law review articles, including The Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing But the Truth: Fulfilling the Promise of Truth In Lending, 25 Yale J. Reg. 181 (2008); Foreclosing Modifications, 86 Wash. L. Rev. 755 (2011), and Pay Attention!  Marginalized Communities, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and Regulatory Advocacy, 82 Montana Law Review 343 (Summer 2021). 

She was an Open Society Foundations Leadership in Government Fellow in 2020-2021.

She began her career as a legal services lawyer representing low-income homeowners and community groups in and around East St. Louis, Illinois, including serving as corporate counsel to the largest private nonprofit affordable housing provider in the East St. Louis metropolitan area.

Education

J.D. New York University, cum laude, Root-Tilden-Kern Scholar

B.A. Cornell University, magna cum laude