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The Andalusia Area Chamber of Commerce’s Distinguished Service Award for 2023-2024 is Kiley Spears.

An Andalusia native, Kiley serves as the executive director for Meredith’s Miracles, a non-profit organization dedicated to helping families with sick children. Meredith’s Miracles is a 501(c) (3) non-profit that specializes in assisting families with travel expenses during medical emergencies. Meredith’s Miracles exists to bring awareness of childhood medical issues and to assist families with non-medical expenses that can accrue when a child needs medical services.

Kiley began her journey with Meredith’s Miracles working part-time in 2018 while being a full-time realtor at Coldwell Banker. During her part-time position with the non-profit, Kiley developed Cookies with Characters, the largest fundraising event for Meredith’s Miracles after visiting a similar event with her children.

It did not take long for Kiley to follow her heart and passion for helping people and became a full-time employee of Meredith’s Miracles in 2021. Since then, Kiley has dedicated herself to helping as many families as she can through the organization.

Kiley’s concept, Cookies with Characters, started out with 15 characters for children to meet and enjoy and has increased to over 90 characters in 2023. She is involved with every aspect of the event and pours her heart into making it a success each year.

The Cookies with Character event broke a record and raised over $106,000 to help families through Alabama in 2023, the largest amount raised for the organization to date. Meredith’s Miracles has served 2,586 families since 2006.

For the last three years Meredith’s Miracles has been involved with Christmas in Candyland by providing the very successful “Characters in Candyland” shows and everyone’s favorite holiday event “Cocoa with Characters” bringing thousands to Andalusia. Kiley coordinates and orchestrates both of these additions to Candyland each year.

Kiley is married to Paul Spears Jr. of Andalusia, and they have two children, Dalton and Keaton Spears. She is a proud Andalusia High School 1998 alumna.