Mr. Sanders is a Founding Partner and owns 33.3% of Tobacco Barn Distillery, LLC. His primary focus is “Bourbon Relationships”. As a Founding Partner, he also participates in myriad of other distillery operations (albeit at a much lower level of effort) such as corn planting & harvesting, distilling, barreling, bottling & inventory management.
Previously Mr. Sanders has served as President for two small businesses, Ausley and ATG, LLC. He was a senior executive for Wyle, Inc. for over 26 years before those two positions. Mr. Sanders held a variety of technical & management positions, from Engineering Test Pilot to President in the past 36 years. He is now full time at Tobacco Barn Distillery.
Mr. Sanders was as a reservist in the U.S. Navy. He retired on October 1, 2013 from the Navy with the rank of Rear Admiral. Mr. Sanders holds a bachelor’s degree from the U.S. Naval Academy (1980) and has completed Wharton, Keenan Flagler, MIT Sloan and Darden Executive Business courses. He is a 2011 MIT Seminar XXI fellow in International & Strategic Policy and a 2020 graduate of Goldman Sachs 10K Small Business (Johns Hopkins Cohort 10).
Mr. Sanders has a Graduate Certificate Degree in “Distilled Spirits Business” from the University of Louisville. He graduated in December of 2023 and gave his Capstone presentation on Bourbon “derivative” products and value-added agriculture.