Mac Admins Foundation Awards Charles S. Edge New Speaker Grants for MacAdmins at Penn State
The Mac Admins Foundation is pleased to announce Katie Due and Jonathan Blansingame as recipients of the 2026 Charles S. Edge New Speaker Grant for the MacAdmins Conference at Penn State taking place July 7-10, 2026. This grant supports emerging speakers in the Apple system administration community, helping them share their expertise at conferences worldwide.
Katie Due will speak on Managing the Unmanageable: Rolling out Managed Apple Accounts at MacAdmins, walking the community through how her team designed and implemented federation and Managed Apple Accounts in an environment where more than 1,000 engineers were already using thousands of Personal Apple Accounts, and moved to a fully automated Okta-integrated lifecycle.
Katie is an IT Endpoint and Management Leader with nearly 10 years of experience supporting Apple platforms at enterprise scale. Her work has centered on building thoughtful, scalable systems that reduce friction for end users while maintaining strong security and operational standards.
Jonathan Blasingame will present his talk Jamf as Code: Managing Scripts and Extension Attributes with GitLab CI, demonstrating how he scales scripts and extension attribute management in Jamf Pro by treating Jamf objects as source-controlled code and syncing them via Git using GitLab CI and the Jamf API.
Jonathan is a systems administrator focused on Apple device management and automation. His work emphasizes treating infrastructure and management content as code to improve reliability, auditability, and long-term maintainability.
The Charles S. Edge New Speaker Grant, named in honor of Apple community veteran Charles Edge, is designed to help speakers gain the opportunity to present at major conferences, covering travel, lodging, registration, and mentorship, and is intended to further’s MAF’s mission fostering knowledge sharing and professional growth within the Apple IT ecosystem.
“The Charles Edge New Speaker Grant exists to elevate new voices like Katie’s and Jonathan’s, and ensure that those new voices are heard,” board secretary Rebecca Latimer said. “Bringing new people, experiences, and perspectives to the table keeps conferences vital and makes the community better.”
About the MacAdmins Conference at Penn State
MacAdmins is the premier East Coast conference for anyone who deploys and manages devices in the Apple ecosystem. The multi-track conference presents over 60 sessions and workshops over four days, offering an incredible value and opportunity for Mac Admins to network with fellow professionals.
About Charles S. Edge
Charles S. Edge Jr. was a respected published author of technical works around Apple systems administration, co‑host of the Mac Admins Podcast, host of the History of Computing Podcast, and a veteran of Jamf Software, 318, and Bootstrappers.mn. A passionate Mac Admin, Charles championed new voices within the community,enc ouraging others to speak, publish, and share their expertise. Charles passed unexpectedly in 2024; his gregarious and inclusive voice is deeply missed by his community of friends around the world.
About the Mac Admins Foundation
The Mac Admins Foundation exists in order to advance the global community of people who manage Apple devices at large and small scales. It does this by fostering connections among Mac Admins around the world, sharing knowledge for the community’s ongoing growth, providing community tools such as the Mac Admins Slack, and protecting the independence of the community. The Mac Admins Foundation accomplishes this via the generosity of its community members and strong support from corporate sponsors.
For more information on the Mac Admins Foundation, or to explore sponsorship opportunities, please visit macadmins.org or email giving@macadmins.org.