LAUREL, Miss. — The Mississippi Top 50 inducted Joe F. Sanderson Jr. into its Hall of Fame Feb. 17 with the fifth class of most influential Mississippians. Sanderson joins only 10 other Mississippians who have been inducted into the organization’s hall of fame, including three former Mississippi governors.

“Recognizing the most influential Mississippians every year helps to spotlight what is right with Mississippi, celebrating the people who are the key to providing leadership as we reach for what our great state can and should be for us all,” said Alan Lange, publisher of Y’all Politics.

Raised in a family with a strong entrepreneurial vision and a passion for creating opportunity for many Mississippians, Sanderson has dedicated his career to promoting his state’s economy by growing a business that began as a family-owned feed and seed store in Laurel, Mississippi, to the nation’s third largest poultry producer, according to a press release from Sanderson Farms. As chairman of the board of directors and chief executive officer of Sanderson Farms, he has been an integral part of his family’s business, leading it to new heights of success as a publicly-held company focused on the production, processing and marketing of chicken products with last year’s revenues totaling $4.8 billion.

A life-long Mississippian, Sanderson is a graduate of Laurel High School and Millsaps College. In 1969, he joined the company his grandfather, D.R. Sanderson, had founded in 1947 that is now known as Sanderson Farms, where he would serve in various roles and leadership capacities over the next five decades. As the third generation of the Sanderson family to lead the company, he invested heavily in future growth by expanding existing operations and constructing eight new state-of-the-art poultry complexes over a period of more than two decades. Today, the company’s operations include 12 processing facilities, 11 hatcheries, nine feed mills and one further processing facility spanning the states of Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Georgia and North Carolina.

In addition to ensuring the state’s economic vitality by leading the only Fortune 1000 company headquartered in the state, Sanderson has contributed his time, expertise and support in numerous ways for residents of the Magnolia State, including serving as chairman for the Governor’s Restart Mississippi Commission in 2020 and vice chairman of the Governor’s Commission on Recovery, Rebuilding and Renewal for the Mississippi Gulf Coast following Hurricane Katrina in 2005. He has also served as a trustee for Millsaps College, the Laurel School District and the Mississippi chapter of the Nature Conservancy.

Heavily involved in industry and business associations, Sanderson has served as a past director for the Mississippi Economic Council, the Mississippi Manufacturers Association, the Mississippi Poultry Association, the U.S. Poultry and Egg Association and the National Chicken Council, in addition to currently serving on the board of trustees for the National World War II Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana. He is also a past chairman of the Business and Industry Political Education Committee, the Mississippi Manufacturers Association, the Mississippi Poultry Association and the National Chicken Council.