Rebus Foundation

Last month, we shared a quick recap of the Rebus Luminary Fellowship summit on Granville Island. 🕯️ Since then, we've had time to sit with the experience, including a thoughtful learning memo from our partners at the Leadership Learning Community and feedback from the fellows themselves.

Postsecondary education leaders are carrying a lot right now. Across the cohort's time together, fellows came to a shared realization: they don't have to carry it alone. They practiced naming the systemic pressures shaping their work, holding boundaries with clarity, and treating joy and rest as leadership practices rather than rewards earned at the end of a long week.

💬 "About a week after I returned, I felt a true 'shift' in myself. I am starting to see my future self in a different, yet sustainable and meaningful space." – 2026 Luminary Fellow

The image below captured during the summit maps how this work radiates outward from self, to team, to community. It's a fitting picture of what the fellowship sets in motion: change that starts within ripples forward.

The formal program may have wrapped, but the ripples are just beginning. 🌊 Over the coming months, we'll publish reflections from fellows, told in their own voices and formats. We hope to offer the fellowship again in the future!

A note from Rebus' Executive Director, Apurva Ashok:

Happy 10 Years of Rebus! Rebus was incorporated as a non-profit organization on this day, 10 years ago, with a mission to "foster the development of communities of Open Textbook, Open Access, and Open Webbook creators and users" amongst other open publishing charges. Thank you Hugh and Boris for your vision and these foundations! 🎉

The last decade of Rebus has been experimental, winding, and joyful: we've tried new projects, moved offices, changed teams, welcomed a new Board, grown communities, and in many ways, transformed lives. This has been no small feat: the organization you see today is very much the product of the people behind it. I still see the same spirit that was championed when I joined the organization, nearly a year after it was founded, ring true today. I hope you all can witness it, too!

I've collected a few different pictures from the last decade to look back on where we started, and how far we've come. Happy browsing 🙂

Reaching a milestone anniversary always begets the question: what next? What does the next decade for Rebus look like? Perhaps different as we grapple with new education technology, new models and systems, new institutional and industry priorities, new facilitators, and new activities as we weave this all together. And yet, in many ways, I suspect it will stay the same: welcoming new collaborators; embarking on brave and exciting projects; holding an openness to adapt; prioritizing human-first design, and organizational cultures of care, support, encouragement, and joy. I hope you will all join me for the ride!

We have a full year of 10 year anniversary events coming up ahead, so stay tuned to keep reflecting, celebrating, and looking back & ahead with us!