[5] Sanders began his career at Radio City Music Hall in New York, producing artists including Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye, Whitney Houston, K.D.

Lang, Madonna, Bette Midler, Richard Pryor, Lionel Richie, Liza Minnelli, Paul Simon, Frank Sinatra, Tina Turner, Liberace, Sting, Diana Ross, and The Grateful Dead.

[6][7][8][9][10][11][12] He was Executive Producer there for 15 years and has been credited with reversing the venue's steady decline after its near-bankruptcy in 1978 and turning it into one of the highest grossing theaters in the world.

In the years since, the NFL has, at every single Super Bowl, followed the model Sanders & Jackson created in 1993 enlisting big-name, contemporary, broad-appeal artists to perform during halftime in an effort to keep viewers from straying.

In 2001, Sanders launched Creative Battery, a multimedia production company in partnership with AEG presents, which was responsible for solo Broadway shows by Elaine Stritch and the Barry Humphries character Dame Edna.

[23] Sanders and Ahmet Zappa co-produced a film written and directed by Peter Hedges, The Odd Life of Timothy Green, released by Walt Disney Pictures on August 15, 2012.

In November 2018, Warner Bros. announced the development of a film adaptation of the Color Purple musical, co-produced by Oprah Winfrey, Steven Spielberg, Quincy Jones, and Sanders.

Critics, in widely positive reviews, praised the contemporary updates that the stage musical's creative team have made to the 1982 movie comedy.

In 2013, Sanders and Mara Jacobs began working on a film adaptation of Lin-Manuel Miranda's musical In the Heights, with a script written by Quiara Alegría Hudes, who authored the book for the original stage version.

Sanders eventually persuaded Walker to give her permission and support[32] after telling her that he thought that it had similarities to Fiddler on the Roof – "a community of people that the audience would follow over time".

[35] Later, Sanders would describe the work of producing a musical as "wrestling an octopus, keeping all the puppies in the box," and the hardest thing he had ever done, "more white-knuckle than I'd like, and the most fun I'd ever had.

[37] The London production at Menier Chocolate Factory, directed by John Doyle, was co-produced by Sanders, Winfrey and Roy Furman and ran from July to September 2013.

[45] Sanders, along with jazz legend Wynton Marsalis, produced After Midnight, a reimagined Broadway production of City Center Encores' Cotton Club Parade, which premiered in November 2013 and closed in June 2014.

The production was also notable in that it marked the famed fashion world duo, Isabel and Ruben Toledo, designed and created costumes for a Broadway musical.

The Odd Life of Timothy Green, a 2012 Walt Disney Pictures film co-written and directed by Peter Hedges, was co-produced by Sanders and opened in U.S. theaters on August 15, 2012.

[48] Based on a concept by Ahmet Zappa, the fantasy film is about a magical pre-adolescent boy whose personality and naïveté have profound effects on the people in his town.

After receiving strong reviews in Los Angeles, Sanders brought the show to Broadways Stephen Sondheim Theatre, where it opened to more critical praise on November 11, 2010.

[65][66] Sanders married author and teacher Brad Lamm in California in 2008 in a ceremony officiated by Alice Walker, who was ordained by Universal Ministries for the event.