Christopher Sanders
Executive Director, East Metro Community Improvement District
University of West Georgia BBA ’03, University of Georgia MBA ‘07
Dunwoody, GA
Chris remembers how much his Redan High School administrators emphasized the importance his and his fellow classmates’ test scores and grades. “Our administrators were very focused on us qualifying for HOPE, because that was definitely one way to go to school in the state of Georgia. My counselors had a big push for us to score a thousand or above on the SAT’s, so we had a big ‘thousand and above club.’”
“HOPE was definitely a way of reducing the need for as many loans. Coming from a middle-income family, education was important and finding scholarships was the second important step. And HOPE alleviated that distress of finding as much as humanly possible, that I could focus on other things like developing my career and building my network and finding an internship.”
Chris achieved those goals and eventually graduated from the University of West Georgia in 2003 with his Bachelor’s in Business Administration and from the University of Georgia with a Master’s in Business in 2007. Since then, he has shifted his career focus towards community engagement. “I always wanted to go into business, at the time I thought that’s where I was called to go, but as life happens, you’re called in different directions.”
He credits this shift in purpose to the events of 9/11, which occurred in his second year in undergrad. “I had one burning desire. I’m from a military family; my father was in the Army for over 20 years, a major in the Army. My uncle was an Air Force airman and my aunt was an Army soldier. So serving in the military was in my family, and that was the first thing that called me. I wanted to enlist and go fight and do what I needed to do, but after a couple of days emotions kind of settled in. I am a man of faith and I truly believe that prayer and God was telling me that my direction was somewhere else. So that’s when I started getting heavily involved in politics.”
Chris began to get more involved with the Atlanta Young Republicans and volunteering for political campaigns such as David Perdue’s run for Senate and Nathan Deal’s campaign for Governor. “That community engagement started to bubble up more and more and more, because I could see how political activity from a campaign would mirror in a lot of community activism trying to make substantive changes in an area.”
Now serving as the Executive Director of the East Metro Community Improvement District, Chris tries “to figure out what mechanisms need to be put in place to help the business community thrive and economic development take off…Focusing on beautification of commercial areas so that they’re attractive, focusing on public safety, so that business owners and customers feel safe patronizing the area, and then also working on infrastructure improvements so that traffic flow and roads and everything else look decent to encourage more economic development in the area.”
Chris currently lives in Dunwoody and hopes to one day run for elected office and create a style brand focused on the public image of others who are considering runs for office.