Board of Directors

The Rev. Dr. Joanne Sanders

Membership & Engagement Committee Chair
Retired Senior Associate Dean for Religious Life
Stanford University

The Rev. Dr. Joanne Sanders, retired as Senior Associate Dean for Religious Life after 20 years at Stanford University in Stanford, CA. She is a priest in the Episcopal Church and earned a Master of Divinity from the Church Divinity School of the Pacific (CDSP) at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California and a Doctor of Ministry (D. Min) from Seattle University in Seattle, WA, with a concentration on interdisciplinary leadership.

Sanders professional background includes previous university experience in college admissions and intercollegiate athletics, including collegiate coaching and a Master of Science in Sports Administration. Her educational research and religious interests explore the integrated connection between religion, spirituality and sport. Sanders doctoral work features research on emerging adults and the question of meaning making through intercollegiate athletic participation. Thresholds of Meaning; Sports and Religion on Campus, explores questions of meaning through intercollegiate athletic participation using both theological and philosophical inquiry and the conditions required to consider sport as threshold, a point at which our deepest yearnings and ultimate meaning may be discovered. She has presented her research at two NCAA Women Coaches Academies in Denver, CO in 2018 and 2019.

Rev. Sanders had the unique opportunity to serve on a 40-member multi-faith chaplain team at the 2002 Winter Olympic Games in Salt Lake City, Utah. She collaborated with colleagues across the Stanford campus in developing courses in Sports and Spirituality, The Athlete and Identity and Gender and Sports.

From 2017-2019, Rev. Sanders served as the President of the Association of College and University Religious Affairs (ACURA), a national organization of professionals in higher education working to support pluralistic and inclusive endeavors in religion, spirituality and ethics in colleges and universities. She has been a member of the ACURA Board of Directors since 2014, and will complete her term as Past-President in March, 2021.