Barry A. Sanders

Barry Sanders is President of the Board of Commissioners of the Recreation and Parks Department of the City of Los Angeles and Chairman of the Los Angeles Parks Foundation. He is presently on the Executive Committee of the Board of Directors of the Los Angeles Opera and is leading the citywide Ring Festival LA (April 15 – June 30, 2010). He is also an adjunct professor in the Communications Studies Department at UCLA. He teaches courses entitled “Architecture as Non-Verbal Communication,” “The Images of America around the World,” and “Public Diplomacy.”

With respect to music and the arts, he received the 1999 Medal of Honor for contributions to the arts from the Thornton School of Music of the University of Southern California. He has been Chairman of the Board and President of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Chairman of the Los Angeles Public Library Foundation. He is a member of the Board of Visitors of the UCLA Geffen School of Medicine. He has also served on the Boards of Directors of the Performing Arts Center of Los Angeles County (formerly “The Music Center”), the Music Center Foundation, and the Walt Disney Concert Hall Corporation, the Joffrey Ballet, the Aman Dance Company, the Geffen Playhouse, the Otis Art Institute, and the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, among others.

Barry Sanders was born in Philadelphia and earned degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and Yale Law School. He and his wife Nancy have three grown sons, Peter, Matt and Teddy.