Brenda Leigh Johnson

Brenda Leigh Johnson of Huntington, New York, U.S., was appointed to serve a three-year term as Kiwanis Children’s Fund trustee, beginning October 1, 2022. She passed away on June 28, 2024.

Johnson was a member of the Kiwanis Club of Elmira and before that was a member of the Kiwanis Club of Northport-East Northport, where she served as club president in 2013-14. She subsequently served the New York district as lieutenant governor from 2014-16 and as governor in 2020-21. Johnson was also a part of the Kiwanis International Membership and Engagement Committee from 2015-21 and served as The Eliminate Project District Advocate from 2015-19. 

Johnson said that “the Kiwanis Children’s Fund is at the heart of what we all do through Kiwanis” and that “it has a global reach with a local touch.” She was a member of the Kiwanis Children’s Fund Founders Circle, a Major Gift donor to the Eliminate Project, and a Presidential Walter Zeller Fellow. Johnson achieved Kiwanis International Life Member status in 2014 and was recognized as her club’s Kiwanian of the Year in 2011. Additionally, she was a Brittany Fellow of the New York District Kiwanis Pediatric Lyme Disease Foundation. 

According to Johnson, community service was “part of [her] DNA,” beginning with her time in the Girl Scouts as a child. She was also active with the Northport chapter of St. Charles Hospital Auxiliary and General Needs, an organization serving unhoused veterans. She was a founder of the Long Island Alzheimer’s Foundation and had been a member of the Walt Whitman Birthplace State Historic Site board. 

Prior to her retirement, Johnson worked with Dale Carnegie and Associates, a professional development training organization. She and her husband, Peter, also a member of the Kiwanis Club of Elmira, had one child.