Deen Day Sanders
Class of 1993
- Chairman of the Board Cecil B. Day Investment Company
If you've been blessed abundantly, you should be willing to volunteer and give back to the people who helped you get where you are.
Deen Day Sanders was born in Adrian, Georgia, in 1933, but she moved with her family to Uniontown, Pennsylvania, when she was eight. She attended Mercer University in Macon, Georgia, for two years before marrying Cecil B. Day.
Sanders supplemented her husband's income by selling greeting cards and gift wrap door to door. She completed her degree at Georgia State University and then worked as her husband's secretary while he was building his business, which eventually included the founding of Days Inns of America.
After her husband's death in 1978, Sanders took over as chairman of his investment company as well as the Cecil B. Day Foundation. In 2002, she married Jim Sanders. She founded the Cecil B. Day Laboratory for Neuromuscular Research at Massachusetts General Hospital to research treatments for muscular dystrophy, which has afflicted two of her sons.