Joan Blades is a co-founder of LivingRoomConversations.org, an open-source effort to rebuild respectful civil discourse across ideological, cultural and party lines while embracing our core-shared values. She is also a co-founder of MomsRising.org and MoveOn.org. She is a co-author of The Custom-Fit Workplace: Choose When, Where and How to Work and Boost Your Bottom Line, winner of a Nautilus book award in 2011, and The Motherhood Manifesto, which won the Ernesta Drinker Ballard Book Prize in 2007.

Last century, Blades was a software entrepreneur, a co-founder of Berkeley Systems, best known for the Flying Toaster and the game "You Don't Know Jack." A mediator (attorney) by training and inclination, she is a nature lover, artist and true believer in the power of citizens and our need to rebuild respectful civil discourse while embracing our core shared values.

Activists, Non-Profit & Association, Media Professionals, Social Media, Big Think, Technology, Digital Marketing, Business, Family Business, Business Communications, Business Growth, Software, Software Development, Women's Rights, Women, Women in Entertainment, Female Leadership, Blogging, Authors, Self-Help Authors, Business Authors, Consulting, Political, Women in Tech TED,