Tech vet and physicist Christina Lomasney marries James Mattis, retired basic and ex-defense chief

Christina Lomasney, a tech veteran and physicist who is now director of commercialization at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Wash., has married James Mattis, the retired Marine Corps general who served as the 26th U.S. secretary of defense.

The couple wed recently in a ceremony on the banks of the Columbia River and again on Saturday in Las Vegas with an Elvis impersonator officiating, according to a report from Politico. A reception was held at The Palazzo at Rosina, located in The Venetian resort.

Politico, which reported that the couple first met in a bar, shared links to images from both ceremonies, here and here.

Mattis is a native of Richland who enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve at the age of 18. He graduated from Central Washington University in 1971 and went on to serve 44 years in the Marine Corps, commanding forces at all levels and retiring as a four-star general. He served as secretary of defense from January 2017 to January 2019 under President Trump.

Lomasney is a University of Washington-trained physicist and longtime entrepreneur. She was a onetime project manager at Boeing and co-founded Isotron in 2001, working with government agencies on environmental remediation tech.

In 2007, she founded Modumetal, a Seattle startup that developed an innovative metal manufacturing process as a way to offer better performance at a cheaper price than conventional steel. As CEO she helped form key early partnerships with corporate partners such as Chevron and BP.

Lomasney left Modumetal in August 2020 after she was terminated as CEO by the company’s board following a 13-year run.

She joined PNNL, a government-backed research center based in Eastern Washington, as director of technology deployment and outreach last November. The role is to help take PNNL’s research out of the lab and into the real world, commercializing the intellectual property developed by world-leading scientists and engineers at the $1.2 billion organization.

Mattis’ first love was always for the Corps and he was well known for remaining a bachelor. A 2017 New Yorker profile, which said he once came close to marrying a woman who insisted he leave the Marines, described Mattis’ bachelorhood as allowing “a single-minded focus on his career and a passionate engagement with the military’s traditions and history.”

GeekWire has reached out to Lomasney for additional details on the nuptials and we’ll update when we hear back.