A crowning achievement: From Kids Heart Challenge to the Miss America competition

Like many American Heart Association employees, Sarah Kay Wrenn spends her days helping people live longer, healthier lives. Unlike most, she also has an alter ego whose uniform might include a tiara and a sash.

Wrenn, the development director for school engagement in Columbia, South Carolina, was named Miss South Carolina in June. In September, she vied for the title of Miss America in Orlando, Florida.

Known as “SK” to those around her, Wrenn started entering such competitions when she was 13. An honors graduate with a degree in marketing from Clemson University, she joined the American Heart Association in August 2024. And while she describes her work with the Kids Heart Challenge campaign with joy, her journey to the job was touched by tragedy.

Not long before she was hired, on the day before Father’s Day, her father’s best friend collapsed in his driveway and died of cardiac arrest.

A personal loss

“He was like a second father to me,” Wrenn said. Her father and his friend had grown up alongside one another; their children carpooled to school and played at the beach together. They were like family, she said.

So when she saw the job opening that would let her use her skills to teach about heart health and CPR, it seemed like a sign. “I felt called to apply,” she said.

As a school engagement director, Wrenn travels the Midlands region of South Carolina and a slice of Georgia to promote the Kids Heart Challenge and the American Heart Challenge. “I try to book as many assemblies as possible, especially with our elementary school students,” she said. Sometimes, that means three assemblies a day.

With younger students, Wrenn uses a video to introduce the foundations of CPR. It includes the story of the NFL’s most famous cardiac arrest survivor. “I love seeing their faces light up when Damar Hamlin comes on the screen and talks about his experience,” she said about the Buffalo Bills safety who went into cardiac arrest during a game in January 2023. With older students, she brings along a manikin and demonstrates CPR herself.

In her first year, her efforts helped raise $294,000 and double student participation.

Working together

Wrenn is far from the only link between the competition and the Association. The Miss America’s Scholarship Foundation is a supporter of the Go Red for Women movement, for which Wrenn and other delegates, as contestants are called, have helped raise more than $700,000 since 2023.

Ahead of the festivities this year, Association CEO Nancy Brown presented Chloe Burke, a former college cheerleader who survived cardiac arrest, with the $10,000 Heart of the Advocate Scholarship Award, jointly funded by the Association and Miss America's Scholarship Foundation.

Wrenn was awarded the American Heart Association Leadership Award and $3,300 for her fundraising efforts. As part of that award, Wrenn will get to attend the Red Dress Collection Concert in New York City next year.

Wrenn won additional scholarship money as first runner-up for the Quality of Life Award, which recognizes contestants for their community service initiatives, which in her case were all about the Association.

She also was among the 104 Miss America and Miss Teen America delegates who took part in CPR training during preliminary activities. The skill was hardly new to her – but as she chatted with the trainers, she enjoyed blending her full-time work with her Miss America experience.

Wrenn got to meet Brown at the Miss America’s World Gala. And during the iconic evening gown competition, Wrenn wore her heart on her sleeve – or, in this case, sleeveless.

As she walked the stage in her sparkling red and pink outfit, her recorded voiceover explained: “This red gown is more than my style; it’s my armor, my statement, and my celebration. Red has always symbolized power, passion, and purpose, and last night it carried my mission, Heart Strong… because every heartbeat matters, and every life is worth saving.”

Back to the kids

With the contest behind her, Wrenn’s schedule is still packed as she meets with principals to recruit them for the Kids Heart Challenge. Any Association employee can relate to her countdown to American Heart Month: “February will be here before we know it.”

Some schools have already gotten to work. “I’ve been doing a lot of assemblies,” Wrenn said. But during visits, she doesn’t always deploy her pageant persona right away. That side sometimes comes out as a prize – or a target.

Classes that are tops in fundraising might be promised a party with Miss South Carolina. Or if a school meets their goal, they might be invited to throw a pie in her face.

“I think it’s really fun to come in as just regular Sarah Kay, director of school engagement, go through the assembly and everything, and then at the end, get to surprise them that I’m also Miss South Carolina.”

She’s loving every chance to talk about the Association and its power to help.

At an event where she spoke earlier this year, “so many people across the room were nodding their heads and clapping” as they acknowledged personal losses to heart disease, heart attack and stroke, she said. “Getting to make connections with those in my community – that’s my favorite part of being Miss South Carolina.”