Ian Sander

Ian Sander (November 22, 1947 – May 3, 2016) was an American actor and television producer born in New York City. He appeared on Broadway in 1971 in No Place to Be Somebody before transitioning to a career behind the camera that would span decades in film and television.

Sander earned a B.S. from the University of Southern California and attended Loyola Law School. His early work in production included forming Kaleidoscope Films with Laura Ziskin, through which he produced the theatrical film noir thriller D.O.A. and the feature Everybody's All-American. He later became a principal in Sander/Moses Productions alongside his wife, Kim Moses, whom he married in 1994.

In television, Sander served as Executive Producer and Director of the CBS drama Ghost Whisperer. He co-authored the companion book Ghost Whisperer Spirit Guide and co-created the Ghost Whisperer: The Other Side webseries. His executive producer credits across television also include Profiler, The Beast, New York News, For the People, and Brimstone, with directing credits on several of those series as well.

Sander produced the Emmy Award-winning series Equal Justice and served as executive producer of I'll Fly Away, the Emmy Award-winning two-hour pilot. During his tenure on I'll Fly Away, the series received honors including Emmy Awards, a Peabody Award, Golden Globe Awards, Writers Guild of America Awards, Directors Guild of America Awards, NAACP Image Awards, and the Anti-Defamation League Artistic Achievement Award, among others. The Producers Guild of America named him Television Producer of the Year. He also directed I'll Fly Away: Then and Now, earning a Directors Guild of America nomination for Outstanding Directorial Achievement for a Dramatic Special.

His television movie credits as executive producer include Ali: An American Hero, the Emmy Award-winning Stolen Babies, Kansas, and Chasing the Dragon, the latter of which he also directed. Sander wrote the feature scripts The Surgeon and Home of Champions, and he served as a professor at the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts.

Sander and Moses produced Hollywood and Civil Rights: Destination Freedom, a live event for the Democratic National Committee during the 2000 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles. For ten years, he created and produced entertainment programming for the internet, including Confessions of a Desperate Housewife for ABC.com. He and Moses also developed and executive produced Psychic in Suburbia for the Style Network and co-created what they termed the Total Engagement Experience to describe their promotional approach to television series.

Sander and Moses participated in a panel titled Episodic TV: Elements of a Hit at the Produced By Conference in 2009, and Sander spoke at the National Association of Broadcasters in 2010 on the panel Unboxing Advertising and Entertainment: Building a Transmedia Experience. He is survived by his wife and their two children, Aaron and Declan. Sander died of a heart attack at his home in Malibu, California on May 3, 2016, at the age of 68.