Joan Ellen Blades (born March 18, 1956 in

Berkeley, California Berkeley ( ) is a city on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay in northern Alameda County, California, United States. It is named after the 18th-century Irish bishop and philosopher George Berkeley. It borders the cities of Oakland and E ...

) is an American computer software entrepreneur, political activist, and author. In 1987, she and her husband Wes Boyd co-founded

Berkeley Systems Berkeley Systems was a San Francisco Bay Area software company co-founded in 1987 by Wes Boyd and Joan Blades. It made money early on by performing contract work for the National Institutes of Health, specifically in making modifications to the ...

, a

San Francisco Bay area The San Francisco Bay Area, often referred to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. The Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area G ...

software company that marketed the popular '' After Dark''

screensaver A screensaver (or screen saver) is a computer program that blanks the display screen or fills it with moving images or patterns when the computer has been idle for a designated time. The original purpose of screensavers was to prevent phosphor ...

and the '' You Don't Know Jack'' trivia game. After selling Berkeley Systems in 1997 for $13.8 million, Blades and Boyd founded the liberal political group MoveOn.org. Blades received her B.A. in History from

UC Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant uni ...

in 1977 and her J.D. from the

Golden Gate University School of Law Golden Gate University School of Law (informally referred to as GGU School of Law, GGU Law and Golden Gate Law) is one of the professional graduate schools of Golden Gate University. Located in downtown San Francisco, California, GGU is a Califor ...

. She wrote the book ''Mediate Your Divorce'' (published by

Prentice Hall Prentice Hall was an American major educational publisher owned by Savvas Learning Company. Prentice Hall publishes print and digital content for the 6–12 and higher-education market, and distributes its technical titles through the Safari ...

), and co-wrote ''The Divorce Book''. She was a member of the board and vice president of marketing at Berkeley Systems. Blades created many of the box designs for the early Berkeley Systems products such as ''Stepping Out'' and ''After Dark'', based on her original

collage Collage (, from the french: coller, "to glue" or "to stick together";) is a technique of art creation, primarily used in the visual arts, but in music too, by which art results from an Assemblage (art), assemblage of different forms, thus creat ...

art. In 2006, Blades and

Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner is an American author, speaker, radio host, co-founder and the executive director/CEO of MomsRising.org and board president of the MomsRising Education Fund. In May 2006 Joan Blades and Rowe-Finkbeiner co-founded MomsRising ...

co-authored ''The Motherhood Manifesto'' and co-founded the organization MomsRising.org, dedicated to "bringing millions of people, who all share a common concern about the need to build a more family-friendly America, together as a non-partisan force." In 2010, Blades and Nanette Fondas co-authored ''The Custom-Fit Workplace'', published by Wiley. A practical guide for making the workplace more profitable and a better fit for employees, the book describes work practices like flexible work, virtual work, high-commitment work, non-linear career paths and babies at work. MomsRising.org launched a companion to the book on Labor Day 2010 to encourage supporters of custom-fit work environments to join the conversation about transforming work culture. In 2011, Blades co-founded Living Room Conversations in an effort to bring both sides of the political spectrum together to discuss individual issues in a comfortable environment. Based on six basic rules of discourse, Blades hosted a Living Room Conversation with Tea Party Patriots co-founder

Mark Meckler Mark Jay Meckler (born March 10, 1962) is an American political activist, attorney, and business executive. He currently serves as President of Citizens for Self-Governance and Convention of States Action, and is an active proponent of a conventi ...

and was featured in the '' SF Chronicle''. This led to further work on criminal justice reform and the formation of the

Coalition for Public Safety The Coalition for Public Safety is a bipartisan coalition of progressive and conservative American advocacy groups dedicated to criminal justice reform, established in February 2015. Members Its members include conservative organizations such as ...

. Over 25 Living Room Conversations topics are available for public use, ranging from food to guns to voting and more; they are regularly featured on ''Huffington Post''.

References

External links

Joan Blades
at ''

HuffPost ''HuffPost'' (formerly ''The Huffington Post'' until 2017 and sometimes abbreviated ''HuffPo'') is an American progressive news website, with localized and international editions. The site offers news, satire, blogs, and original content, and ...

'' 1956 births Living people American political activists HuffPost writers and columnists UC Berkeley College of Letters and Science alumni Golden Gate University School of Law alumni Businesspeople from Berkeley, California 20th-century American businesspeople Activists from California {{US-business-bio-1950s-stub