For the Kiwanis International president, relationships are the key. 

By Tony Knoderer

For Michael Mulhaul, it all comes down to personal bonds. Mulhaul was elected as the 2025-26 president of Kiwanis International in June, but the organization still has the same appeal for him that it did when he became a club member 34 years ago.  

“I believe that relationships are the driver of this organization,” he says. “That’s the whole thing to me — to take an interest in each other and build a bond. The more you and I are together, the more we’ve developed that relationship, that trust. You’ve got to take that time.”  

Those kinds of bonds have been instrumental in Mulhaul’s leadership journey from the Kiwanis Club of Parsippany, New Jersey, U.S., to his current role. What he calls “my greatest Kiwanis learning experience” came in 2004, when he was lieutenant governor-elect for the New Jersey District. The lieutenant governor at the time, Nancy Boucher, invited Mulhaul to accompany her on all her official visits.  

“Part of the value in a relationship is ‘shadowing’ — following somebody to learn the proper approach,” he says. “Shadowing Nancy allowed me to experience firsthand what would be expected — because she invited me to everything.” 

An instant and enduring connection
From the start, Mulhaul learned to appreciate the difference between pleasant conversation and a fully developed alliance of people ready to take action. In 1991, his brother-in-law invited him to a lunchtime meeting for another volunteer organization’s local club. Since it was near Mulhaul’s home in Wayne, New Jersey, U.S., he went to the meeting and found that he enjoyed the people and what he calls the light-hearted “bantering.”  

But he noticed that the club never moved into deeper discussions of service or projects.  

“I remember as if it was yesterday — just walking to the parking lot,” Mulhaul recalls. “I said, ‘Rich, I don’t really think this is for me.’ And years later, I reflected on it: I never learned all the wonderful things that they do because I never went back.”  

Six months later, he says, his brother-in-law told him that another service club was opening at a point nearly 30 miles from his home and office. That was the Kiwanis Club of Greater Parsippany, where he is a member to this day.  

“It was ideal for me,” Mulhaul says. “It was all about kids — it wasn’t just business-related. The connection was immediate.” It has also proved to be enduring. Nearly 35 years later, Mulhaul can see that the combination of the members’ fellowship and their service in the community was a formative element in his vision of Kiwanis as an organization driven by relationships. “I mean, it was a family, really,” he says. “To me it was a big lesson that it’s a family experience that keeps you together.” 

A family affair
That family feeling was well timed. He and his wife, Laura, were engaged to be married — they would wed in December of that year — and didn’t have children yet. Kiwanis would be a gateway to the life they aspired to.  

“It was community-focused,” Laura says, “and I guess that’s what really lured me in. But really, Kiwanis became part of our family.”  

That involvement would become literally family-oriented over the years as the Mulhauls raised three children and became grandparents to Parker Gray and Dakota Maeve. 

Although Laura was involved with the Parsippany club throughout Michael’s membership, she officially joined in 2015. (She and Michael are also charter members of the Kiwanis Club of Asbury Park, New Jersey.) As their children became adults, she says, she had more time to devote to membership — and felt inspired by the children’s service journeys.  

Their oldest son, Zachary, and their daughter, Emily, both became extremely engaged members of Circle K International, the Kiwanis Service Leadership Program for university students. (The family penchant for service also extends to their younger son, Curtis, who is a volunteer firefighter.)  

“I saw the effect it was having on them and, you know, we were getting older and my children were getting more independent,” Laura says. “And when they went off to college, they achieved service as president of their CKI clubs at the University of Scranton.”  

In fact, they were both two-time presidents. And during Zach’s presidency, the 20-member club became much larger.  

“He grew it to over 100 members and he actually got an award that year for growth,” Michael says. “(The school) gave him the auditorium to have their meetings.”  

The importance of new members
As a Kiwanian, membership growth has been a point of emphasis for Mulhaul himself. Being part of a thriving club, he says, has helped him understand that the club experience can be a motivation.  

“I came from such an enormously successful club in Parsippany that, as I’ve moved into leadership roles in Kiwanis, I’ve always thanked [fellow club members] — because they opened my eyes to the fact that every town around the world should have a club like the one in Parsippany,” he says.  

Mulhaul is particularly passionate about bringing young adults into the Kiwanis family. He is the driving force behind a new pilot program called Kiwanis Voices. These clubs will have members ages 18-26.  

“We have about a quarter of a million Key Club students and in June, about 70,000 graduated. So about 2% of those go to CKI, which is great that they do — but thousands of them disappear from us. We don’t see them again until we’re approaching them years later, trying to say, ‘Would you like to join Kiwanis?’”  

Kiwanis Voices, he says, adds an avenue for young adults to stay with the Kiwanis family without that break — and to welcome others in their peer group as their lives evolve in young adulthood. That makes it an opportunity for Kiwanis Voices members to stay together through the years.  

“At some point you may move out of state or away from where you can attend a particular club’s meetings, which most will over time,” Mulhaul says. “But this is a chance to maintain that connection that you developed in high school — because that’s the way Kiwanis really gets to another 50 or 100 years.”  

The leadership journey
Looking back on their shared Kiwanis journey, the Mulhauls see strength in the organization’s flexibility of membership and its ability to accommodate people’s lives. 

“When you’re a member or you’re active so many years, life takes different twists and turns,” Laura says. “But if it’s in your heart and you believe in what you’re doing, it’s always there to embrace you when you’re ready again.”  

As an investment professional, Michael didn’t initially seek Kiwanis membership as a business or networking opportunity — or even as a way to bring his expertise to his club.  

“I didn’t want to be treasurer,” he says. “I didn’t want the finance side of things because I was doing it all the time.”  

But while he was fulfilling a passion for giving back to his community, he came to understand that a person’s talent can be another means for supporting the organization. In the Parsippany club, Mulhaul did become treasurer — and that turned out to be the beginning of a leadership journey that would extend to service as club president and beyond. For example, he is a past chairman of the Kiwanis International Audit and Finance Committee, among many other positions leading up to his presidency. 

“Mark Litwack, who was a dear friend of mine, always said, ‘You’ve got to bring your financial expertise to the organization.’ And I started to realize that was something I could, without question, contribute to.”  

For Mulhaul, those conversations are a key to the organization’s success: “When someone sits across from me for 10 minutes, we’re going to say, ‘How did you get here with me? Tell me about yourself.’ We’re going to talk about clubs. We have to do that. But when you’re across from me and I’m across from you, we have to build a bond.”  

From the Kiwanian who’s persuading someone to join their club to the member who’s talking to another about leadership, the organization’s potential is realized, Mulhaul says, when people earn each other’s confidence.  

“I’m a big believer that everybody wants to give back and should give back, and that we sometimes have to plant that seed,” he says. “The magic of Kiwanis is not in the offices we seek. It’s in the relationships we have and will develop well into the future.”