MISS Foundation Congressional Liaisons

Richard May began his career in politics twenty years ago when he formed his first grassroots campaign to create the first city music commission in the United States, As one of the youngest appointed City of Austin Music Commissioners, May then went on to create the first-ever, city-sponsored, music television channel in the world, the Austin Music Network.

May’s political career continued when he was hired to clerk the Texas House of Representatives Appropriations Committee. He then went to work politics for groundwater districts, and, for the past 13 years, he has lobbied on behalf of a national business/trade association before the U.S. Congress and state legislatures. When May is not being the lobbyist for the business association, he represents the Arts Alliance, a grassroots political advocacy group he founded representing the five arts and entertainment industries in Austin, TX.

In March 2007, May and his wife Kelli experienced the devastating loss of their only child, Madeleine, who died at full term at nearly 42 weeks gestation. In coordination with the MISS Foundation, May and Montgomery currently advocate awareness and appropriations through the U.S. Congress and the National Institute of Child Health & Human Development to continue and further the stillbirth research that the MISS foundation initiated in 2003.

Kelli Montgomery is a former newspaper reporter and magazine journalist who has written extensively on city, county and state political issues. For the past five years, she has worked as the executive director of a nonprofit arts organization in Austin, TX. Currently, Kelli and her husband Richard act as political liaisons for the arts, and, more recently, have coordinated efforts with the MISS Foundation to bring awareness to the number one child killer in America — stillbirths. Since the sudden death of her daughter in early 2007, she has become an advocate for raising awareness and funding priorities to adequately address the stillbirth issue in the U.S.