Chad Sanders is a writer, director, actor, and musician based in New York City. He is the author of Black Magic: What Black Leaders Learned from Trauma and Triumph. He is the host of the Yearbook podcast on the Armchair Expert network and the Audible Originals podcast, Direct Deposit.
Chad’s work has been featured in The New York Times, Time, Fortune, Forbes, Deadline, Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, and other publications. Chad has also written for TV series on Max and Freeform.
Sanders has spent time working at Google and YouTube and as a tech entrepreneur. He has since written and co-written TV series and feature films with collaborators Spike Lee, Morgan Freeman and Will Packer. Sanders’ op-ed pieces have appeared in The New York Times, SLAM magazine and Teen Vogue.
Before living in New York, Chad lived in Berlin, London, Oakland, and Atlanta. Chad was raised in Silver Spring, Maryland, and earned his BA in English at Morehouse College.
Early Life and Education
Growing up, Chad Sanders, 34, showed an innate ability to thrive in the arts. As a child, he gravitated towards writing, following in his older sister's footsteps, and had avid reading parents who surrounded the house with books.
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"I found writing [as] a way that I could express things that I didn't always feel allowed to say or even embody in the life that I lived as a Black kid growing up in largely White suburbs," Sanders says.
He used the arts as an outlet for his angst and thoroughly detailed the number of artistic undertakings he enjoyed during his childhood. He acted in plays and participated in the band; he is well-versed in the piano and the trumpet. Sanders, at the age of 12, went on to land a role on television called Adventure Camp on Discovery Kids.
Career Beginnings
However, as he entered the corridors of higher education and early adulthood, the fire that once burned for burgeoning creativity was quickly extinguished upon entering Morehouse College.
"I saw how much our school and the American economy push people towards economics, finance sciences, and away from the arts, and I followed the trend," he confesses, finding employment at Google working in Human Resources. He also held positions at YouTube working in its sports and music division and moved from the Palo Alto Mountain View office in California to New York over to London.
"I got to see the world; they showed me what enterprise looked like at the biggest scale," he says. "I got to see what I wanted to eventually build, which was a big company capable of doing a lot, and I think that has changed over the last ten years. In the time I've been out in the workplace, I don't want to have a bunch of employees anymore."
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Becoming immersed in technology, commerce, and all the factors that drive the American economy and create jobs, Sanders felt unfilled. "I got away from writing. Probably four or five years out of school, I was repressed and hurt from not having my creative outlet." He eventually pivoted and reconnected with his first love. In the actual mythology of the starving artist, Sanders turned to a minimalist lifestyle to "shoot his shot at his dreams."
His tenure at Google provided a tidy financial cushion, but when he left the tech industry, remunerations were no longer hitting his direct deposit. Living in an apartment in Brooklyn, New York, on a mattress, Sanders rapidly examined his expenses, canceled his subscriptions, and avoided going out to eat and dating.
"I couldn't go to homecoming, birthdays, and weddings. All of a sudden, my life just got small and singular, and in a way, I liked the simple lifestyle," detailing his experiences as an aspiring television writer. Every day, he would grab his laptop, stroll to Baba Cool Cafe in Brooklyn and dedicate his entire day to composing a story.
"I wrote my first TV pilot called the Archer Connection, and I met Spike [Lee] was sitting ten or 15 feet away from that coffee shop one day because 40 Acres and A Mule Filmworks is right there on the corner. So I got my little laptop, walked over, and introduced myself to him," Sanders says of meeting the Oscar-winning director.
"He was scrolling his BlackBerry, I told him who I was, and he told me to send him the pilot, and I didn't do it because I was nervous; it was Spike Lee." Later on, Sanders reconnected with Lee, and as he recounts, like a scene out of the movie, the novice writer is jetted off in first class to Hollywood to pitch ideas to all the studios.
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"Eventually BET bought the TV pilot, Spike walked away, but I was in the door," he says, elaborating how the opportunity led him to meet agents, managers, and other vital connections. Sanders went on to write for Grown-ish, a spin-off sitcom from the ABC hit show Black-ish, and gives credit to Lee for first believing in his capability.
Due to their hectic schedules, Sanders still keeps a close relationship with the BlacKkKlansman director and will randomly meet for lunch to discuss his work, offer advice, and caution him on how to steer his career.
"He reminds me to beware of Hollywood, the industry, of people who represent themselves as allies who are there to undermine or to objectify. Those touch points I have with Spike and a few people in my life are enough to start to piece together the Rubik's cube to help me find a path.
Author Talks | Chad Sanders, Black Magic: What Black Leaders Learned from Trauma and Triumph
The Revelation of "Black Magic"
Chad Sanders’s novel, Black Magic, exposes the assimilation to white male-dominated corporate culture that people of color feel is necessary to embody in order to be recognized as a professional.
When Chad Sanders landed his first job in lily white Silicon Valley, he quickly concluded that to be successful at work meant playing a certain social game. Each meeting was drenched in white slang and the privileged talk of international travel or folk concerts in San Francisco, which led Chad to believe he needed to emulate whiteness to be successful. So Chad changed. And while he finally felt included, he felt awful.
Recognizing that that narrative was false and oppressing, Sanders broke away from this charade. When he realized that connecting with his Black identity gave him the power of Black Magic, namely resilience, creativity, and confidence, he forged in his experience navigating America as a Black man. In his essays, he interviews other Black leaders across industries to get their take on their own Black Magic.
Sanders believes, was something he calls Black Magic, namely resilience, creativity and confidence forged in his experience navigating America as a Black man. Black Magic has emboldened his every step since, leading him to wonder: Was he alone in this discovery?
In moving essays, Chad dives into his formative experiences to see if they might offer the possibility of discovering or honing this skill. He tests his theory by interviewing Black leaders across industries to get their take on Black Magic.
Financial Literacy and "Direct Deposit"
As his star continued to rise, in February of last year, his then-agent, Ashley Holland, received offers for Sanders to work on projects for BET, Netflix, and Issa Rae's new show Rap Sh!t. He felt it was a chance of a lifetime since he diligently studied Rae's path as a creator and entrepreneur. He read the pilot and immediately signed on to work closely with Rae and learn from everybody involved in the project.
The fantasy of the glitz and glam of Hollywood quickly dissipated when Sanders had to face the reality of lacking crucial financial literacy. Growing up, his parents were always gainfully employed; he enjoyed the fruits of a full scholarship to college and never faced economic challenges, nor did he have an actual frame of reference for fiscal responsibility.
Before his writing career, he relied on his paycheck every two weeks from his tech employer without considering saving a portion of his earnings. "Besides writing on Rap Sh!t I haven't had a direct deposit since 2015. So now, what I think about money is how much longer do I get to try to live out my dreams until I have to tuck my tail between my legs and work for somebody else. I don't mean to sound disrespectful to anyone in that position. But I am wired in such a way that makes me sad. The idea of working to build someone else's vision instead of mine breaks me," he says.
Improving his financial literacy, Sanders describes as baptism by fire, "I cashed out my 401k from Google because I was running out of money. I didn't realize I would be taxed on that, so it was half of how much I thought I actually had. I did not realize the realities of credit. I lived up until this point in my life without a credit card because money was so theoretical to me on some level. When I became an entrepreneur, I realized some people won't pay you after you have done your services for them, you will have to chase them down, and they still might not pay you. People don't care if you can't eat, if you're broke, like the realities of money have become so much more primal to me."
Sanders recalls staring at his dwindling bank account and not having any other source of income made him more aware of the necessity of money. "Two years ago, in the middle of COVID, my fiancée and I were living in rural Maryland at my grandmother's house because we fled New York. I had to call around, chase down lawyers and executives because studios were not paying me because Hollywood [was] on a freeze, and I was running out of money. My financial literacy - I've been thrown into the pool's deep end by this industry."
Now engaged, Sanders applauds his frugal fiancée for helping build a healthy financial foundation by continually analyzing how they can live within and beneath their means. He realizes that the only way he can continue to work as a television writer is to remain financially free. Chad Sanders "Direct Deposit" invites a collection of notable personalities on his new Audible podcast.
Sanders wants to share all his valleys and mountaintop experiences with listeners to help guide them in achieving financial competency. He launched a podcast aptly titled "Direct Deposit" and drew inspiration for the name from a book he read about branding and marketing.
Each episode, he has a conversations with people who have achieved success like Issa Rae, Soledad O'Brien, Gabrielle Union, Pinky Cole, Charles D. King, and NFL quarterback guru Quincy Avery. “They tell me about those moments where [they] were, honestly depressed, scared, couldn't get out of bed, because you didn't know if this was gonna work out for you. So we take you through the whole experience, trying to get money working with White people, mental health, therapy, and having fun with your money. I tell the whole story in a way that is almost a three-dimensional audio experience,” he adds.
Sanders wants his podcast listeners to become enthralled, elevated, and connected to him as a storyteller. Yet, while he is relaying practical financial advice, he wants his audience to consume it as art the way they would analyze their favorite album or movie.
“That's because I will ask something so uncomfortable in a safe way because I need these answers; this is my real life. I'm talking about my therapy; my family didn't even know I went to therapy before this project came out.
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