In 1987, she and her husband Wes Boyd co-founded Berkeley Systems, a San Francisco Bay area software company that marketed the popular After Dark screensaver and the You Don't Know Jack trivia game.

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 art.

In 2006, Blades and Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner co-authored The Motherhood Manifesto[6] 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 2011, Blades co-founded Living Room Conversations[8] 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,[9] Blades hosted a Living Room Conversation with Tea Party Patriots co-founder Mark Meckler and was featured in the SF Chronicle.