User:Jaggered/sandbox

His mother attended college while raising six children and earned a PhD in educational administration in 1991; her father, who holds an MBA, is currently the chief information officer at the University of Southern California.

Rhimes lived in Park Forest South (now University Park, Illinois), with two older brothers and three older sisters. She has said she exhibited an early affinity for storytelling and that her time spent as a hospital volunteer while in high school sparked an interest in hospital environments.

She wrote for the college newspaper. After college, she relocated to San Francisco with an older sibling and worked in advertising at McCann Erickson. She subsequently relocated to Los Angeles to attend the University of Southern California to study screenwriting. While at USC, Debra Martin Chase hired her as an intern and Rhimes credits her early success in part to mentors like a prominent African-American producer, who hired her as an intern at Denzel Washington's production company Mundy Lane Entertainment.