Lieutenant Colonel Mathison Hall has served in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve since 2015 following more than twelve years of active duty service. Before assuming command of 1st Battalion, 25th Marines, he was assigned to the operations section of 25th Marine Regiment, both at Fort Devens, Massachusetts. He previously served as the operations officer of 1st Battalion, 23d Marines in Texas and as a detachment officer-in-charge with the 2d Civil Affairs Group in Washington, DC. LtCol Hall’s operational forces assignments while on active duty were with the 1st Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, where he was a Light Armored Vehicle platoon commander and the assistant battalion operations officer; and 1st Battalion, 4th Marines, where he served as a company commander and the battalion operations officer.

LtCol Hall’s active duty and reserve tours have included combat and operational deployments to Iraq (Operation Iraqi Freedom) and with the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit in the Western Pacific; participation in theater security cooperation exercises in Japan, Thailand, Korea, and Morocco; and instructor tours at The Basic School in Quantico, Virginia, where he taught infantry tactics and leadership, and at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, where he taught military history and offshore sailing. 
LtCol Hall is a distinguished graduate of the Marine Corps University’s Expeditionary Warfare School and Command and Staff College non-resident programs, the U.S. Army’s Maneuver Captains Career Course resident program in Fort Benning, Georgia, and the Joint and Combined Warfighting School at the Joint Forces Staff College in Norfolk, Virginia. He has also taught as an adjunct instructor for the Marine Corps University since 2015 and has been twice recognized as the instructor of the year in the Expeditionary Warfare School non-resident program.

In his civilian career, LtCol Hall is an assistant program manager, section supervisor, and systems engineer at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, where he works on a wide range of technology research and development projects for the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security. He currently leads a team conducting research and technology prototyping for the Department of Homeland Security and has previously led or worked on US European Command, US Special Operations Command, Marine Corps Systems Command, Naval Education and Training Command, US Border Patrol, and Joint Staff technology development projects. He serves on the Johns Hopkins University Diversity Leadership Council and is a contributor to the engineering technology startup Gyrene Engineering Management (GEM).

LtCol Hall is a past national security fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington, D.C., a Defense Council member with the Truman National Security Project, and was an elected board member for the Anchorage Community of Annapolis. He writes regularly on defense, technology, and community topics and has been published in USA Today, The Baltimore Sun, Capital Gazette, Maryland Gazette, Military Officer Magazine, Army University Press publications, and Shipmate Magazine. 

LtCol Hall received a Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics and History from the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, where he served as the Commander of the Brigade of Midshipmen and attended the U.S. Military Academy at West Point as an exchange midshipman. He completed his graduate studies at the University of Cambridge in England where he was a Nolan Scholar, earning a Master of Philosophy degree in Development Economics and rowing on his college’s crew team. He is currently working on a Master of Science degree in Systems Engineering from the Johns Hopkins University Whiting School of Engineering. 

A native of New Orleans, Louisiana, he is an active distance runner, triathlete, and community volunteer.