Candidate for
Governing Board Member; Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District

Kelly McMahon Pye is the third of nine children who originally hails from Chicago, Illinois, but who did most of her growing up in Dayton, Ohio. Kelly attended Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, and graduated with a B.A. in English from the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. She worked as a writer in Ohio prior to coming to California.

Kelly has been a resident of Santa Monica for nearly twenty years. She spent over 15 years in executive and managerial positions in the newspaper business. Many of her years in the newspaper industry were with the Santa Monica based Outlook newspaper. At the Outlook, Kelly worked with businesses throughout both Santa Monica and Malibu before she became the Retail Advertising Manager, in which she responsible for the retail revenues of the daily Outlook newspaper and six community weekly papers.

Kelly's career next moved into the national newspaper arena, in which she worked to build business parnerships between newspapers across the country and their business clients in the West. She was responsible for a portfolio of 1000 newspapers in various categories of business. She and a colleague eventually established a division of the media company she was employed by which consulted exclusively with the movie studios and newspapers (and newspaper groups like Gannett and Media News Group) around the country. Kelly is a past Executive Board Member and Treasurer of the Newspaper Advertising Sales Association, Southern California Chapter, and was elected to this post for a four year term by her national newspaper colleagues and competitors.

Kelly's involvement in the local school community began when her son Trevor first entered kindergarten, co-chairing a major fundraiser at Will Rogers Elementary school, the district's largest Title One elementary school. Kelly next became heavily involved with community building at Will Rogers, taking the post of Community Concerns Vice President in the PTA, and also became Chair of the Site Governance Council at the school. She then took on the role of PTA President at Will Rogers, serving the maximum two year term. It has been said that Kelly's legacy to the school was in bringing the diverse community together. In the school's Pony Express newsletter it was written that Kelly, "challenged our leaders to look at the rich diversity our Will Rogers community brings to Santa Monica and to honor it with the respect it deserves."

While Kelly has been a major voice in our south side schools for some time, and is currently an Executive Board Member of both Will Rogers PTA and John Adams PTSA, her focus and involvement has expanded significantly throughout the district. She is a past member of the SMMUSD PTA Council and the Community for Excellent Public Schools (CEPS) Advisory Committee, serves on the SMMUSD Equity Fund Oversight Committee and was appointed to the SMMUSD Blue Ribbon Bond Feasibility Community. She also was an active participant in the campaigns for Measures S and EE. Kelly sees her candidacy for the School Board as a natural progression in her advocacy for academic rigor and high achievement for all children.

Kelly is married to Richard (aka Dickie) Pye, who has been very involved in the Santa Monica AYSO program for many years. Richard and Kelly operate Richard Pye Masonry, Inc., which specializes in custom residential masonry projects. They are the proud parents of two children, Trevor, a seveth grader at John Adams Middle School, and Suzanne, a fifth grader at Will Rogers. The family, with their dog PJ, lives in the Sunset Park area of Santa Monica.