Cassidy James Blaede

Experienced, friendly, and creative open source community builder passionate about connecting people and technology, equipping developers with the best tools, and building tech for good.

Career Experience

Three years as partner success engineer. Over a decade of open source development, consensus building, and community engagement. Strong background in user experience design and web development.

ROOST

OSS Community Manager Oct 2025 –

Building and supporting an active and sustainable contributor community around our tools, as well as helping improve the discourse and understanding of open source in the trust and safety world.

Endless Access

Community Architect/Experience Lead Mar 2025 – Oct 2025

Led the community efforts around game-making and learning programs, and acted as the organization’s open source/community subject matter expert.

Achievements:

Partner Success Engineer Mar 2022 – Mar 2025

Acted as the bridge between our engineering team and our dozens of impact partners deploying the open source, Linux-based Endless OS and other technologies around the world.

Achievements:

elementary, Inc. Apr 2011 – Mar 2022

Co-founder, Chief Experience Officer (CXO)

Co-founded the company and helped it grow to sustain multiple employees while releasing 6 major OS releases and a pay-what-you-can app store.

Responsible for the overall experience and messaging of the company and products, user experience architecture, and being a liaison between end users, OEMs, developers, and other open source projects.

Achievements:

System76

UX Architect Jan 2017 – Aug 2018

Front-end Web Developer May 2014 – Jan 2017

Volunteer Experience

GNOME Foundation

Vice Secretary 2025–

Appointed to aid in keeping and publishing minutes.

Director 2025–

Appointed to the GNOME Foundation board of directors to help govern, represent, and steer the non-profit. After my initial appointment, I was elected by the GNOME Foundation membership to serve an additional term as director.

Flathub Developer Advocate 2024–

I assist with technical documentation, writing public announcements, Flathub’s social media presence, and developer relations.

Member & Designer 2017–

I contribute to platform and app ecosystem UX design, community engagement, and GNOME’s social media presence.

Education

University of Northern Iowa 2012–2014

Interactive Digital Studies

Des Moines Area Community College 2010–2012

Liberal Arts