Tony P. Hall

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Tony Patrick Hall (born January 16, 1942) is an American politician, businessman, and diplomat. He served as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives for Ohio’s 3rd district from 1979 to 2002. Before that, he was in the Ohio General Assembly—the House from 1969 to 1973 and the Senate from 1973 to 1979. From 2002 to 2006, he was the United States Ambassador to the United Nations Agencies for Food and Agriculture in Rome, leading the U.S. Mission to the FAO, the World Food Programme, and the International Fund for Agricultural Development.

Hall grew up in Dayton, Ohio. His father, Dave Hall, was a Republican mayor of Dayton. He attended Fairmont High School in Kettering and earned a bachelor’s degree from Denison University in 1964, where he played college football. He spent two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in Thailand, teaching English, an experience that shaped his interest in hunger issues. After college, he worked in real estate and later joined the Democratic Party.

In Congress, Hall focused on fighting world hunger. He chaired the House Select Committee on Hunger from 1989 to 1993 and founded the Congressional Hunger Center. He worked on foreign affairs and small business issues and proposed apologies for slavery on two occasions. He became an evangelical Christian in the 1980s, which led him to change his views on abortion, but his overall voting record remained liberal.

After leaving government, Hall helped with a Middle East peace initiative and stayed active in hunger relief. He served as executive director emeritus of The Alliance to End Hunger and joined nonprofit boards to promote anti-poverty work. In Dayton, he started the Hall Hunger Initiative in 2015 and supported local food projects like the Gem City Market co-op. He and his wife, Janet Sue Dick, married in 1973 and had two children, Jyl and Matthew (who died in 1996). Hall has received many awards and Nobel Peace Prize nominations for his work to fight hunger.