NASJA President

NASJA President Charlie Sanders, in addition to his credentials as a ski historian, is one of the nation’s leading international copyright attorneys. He currently chairs the Congressionally chartered National Music Council of the United States, serves as outside counsel to the Songwriters Guild of America, and advises many other entertainment community non-profits including The Native American Music Association and the Authors Guild.

Among Sanders’ related pursuits, he is a former two-term chairman of the music industry’s leading social justice outreach group, WhyHunger/Artists Against Hunger & Poverty, the recipient of a 2014 Emmy Award for educational production, a three-decade Grammy voting member and former two-term Grammy governor, and a platinum award-winning producer, musician and liner notes author. As a former copyright fellow at NYU School of Law, he has also served as an adjunct professor at the NYU Steinhart School for over twenty-five years.

Sanders’ experience as a snow-sports and environmental commentator is equally varied. He is one of the most widely travelled ski journalists in the world, and remains among the handful of persons ever to record off-piste alpine ski descents on all seven continents (including in Antarctica, the Arctic and the Himalayas). He currently serves as vice-chair of the United States Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame, as a longtime board member of the International Skiing History Association, and was elected for membership in the globally renowned Explorers Club in 2018.

A frequent contributor to the pre-eminent ISHA magazine “Skiing History,” he is also author of the popular, award-winning history of the US ski troops in WWII, “The Boys of Winter” and was a key contributor to “Passion for Skiing: The History of Snow Sports at Dartmouth College” (both of which earned the prestigious ISHA ULLR Award and other industry honors). Sanders is likewise author of several, seminal articles on winter snow-sports, including global ski mountaineering history (“Skiing the Seven Continents”), ski music (“Sunshine On My Shoulders”), and ski area liabilty (“Have Attorneys Really Chilled the Ski Industry?”). Originally from Brooklyn, Sanders is a proud 10^th Mountain Division descendant and was taught to ski by Camp Hale vets in the Berkshires. He resides with his family on Pocantico Lake in Westchester, New York.