In 1998, when Joan Blades turned on the TV and all she saw were stories about Bill Clinton’s impeachment, she became fed up. She was frustrated and bewildered that in light of so many pressing and critical issues, the only thing about which people were talking were Clinton’s indiscretions with a White House intern. So, Blades and her husband sent out an email to family and friends, trying to find some common ground from which most Americans could sign on and work toward creating real civic engagement and attention to crucial issues affecting the U.S.

Thus, MoveOn.org was born. The idea of MoveOn.org was to organize and inform citizens by using the Internet. Within a few weeks, this email to their small network grew to over 100,000 people, and in a year, to almost half a million people. Today, MoveOn.org has garnered 300,000 petition signers, 3,000 active volunteers, and generated more than one million communications to Congress.

The heart of MoveOn.org is the “Wisdom of Crowds” philosophy, by which a crowd of everyday people who unite will actually come up with a better answer than experts. MoveOn.org started as a grassroots organization that literally set up hundreds of house parties all across the country to determine the main issues facing Americans today. They identified them to be: healthcare, global warming, clean energy, and the restoration of democracy. They then began to mobilize people around these issues to voice their opinions to the government.

Whether or not people ascribe to the values and mission of the organization, no one will deny that it has been able to be heard in the highest levels of the political arena. What is truly amazing about MoveOn.org, though, is how it works—through emails and house parties, hundreds of thousands of people that had never been political before have become engaged.

But on October 17th, 2007, Joan came to talk to a group of young WWS graduate students about a new organization she founded: Mom’s Rising. While Joan is a successful professional— she is a software industry veteran, having co-founded a leading entertainment software company, Berkeley Systems, and Cavort Learning Systems, an Internet education startup—she is also a proud mother.

When she learned about the disparities faced by mothers in the workforce, she felt compelled to initiate change. The statistics are shocking: a woman who reveals that she is a single mother is 79 percent less likely to get a job than a man is; only four countries in the world have no paid maternity leave, one of which is the United States.

Although the audience consisted mostly of young, single people, most of whom do not have children and are in the midst of launching very demanding and promising career paths, she managed to connect these young people to causes that have united 120,000 mothers across the nation. Using the same brilliant methods used in MoveOn.org, mothers have logged on and are communicating with each other, organizing and, most importantly, mobilizing to advocate for political change on key issues. Mom’s Rising is working for open, flexible work hours, healthcare coverage for all children in the U.S., better childcare, and fair wages for equal work. As she talked, students quickly saw that these issues are not simply about Mothers Rising but, as she so beautifully puts it, families rising. These policies affect everyone’s daily lives and she calls for participation by all citizens who care about these issues.

Again, her Internet-local gathering model is a systems approach that has transformed political action. Thousands of mothers are showing up at political hearings and pushing officials to put these issues on the table. It’s working, and it’s working in a big way because it’s easy to start, easy to get involved, and, according to her, people who are engaged in a small way typically have a higher probability of becoming involved more broadly in issues.

In true form, Joan finished her inspiring talk by asking only one thing from the audience: to get online, log on, and get involved.