Hello, Pressbooks community!
I’m thrilled to officially greet you as the new CEO of Pressbooks. As I step into this role, I want to share a bit about my journey, what drew me to Pressbooks, and what excites me most about our future together.
The Beginning of My Pressbooks Story
For those who don’t know me, I’m Başak Büyükçelen. Over the past five years, I’ve had the privilege of serving as Pressbooks’ COO. Before joining this incredible team, I held leadership roles in finance, customer success, and operations. What attracted me to Pressbooks was its mission to transform education through open and accessible digital publishing.
As someone who deeply values the power of storytelling and learning, I saw Pressbooks as a unique platform that enables individuals and institutions to create meaningful educational resources. It wasn’t just about the technology—it was about how we could support educators and students in sharing knowledge and making learning more accessible.
Shaping the Future: My Journey So Far
During my time as COO, one of my main priorities was creating a people-centred culture that could thrive while driving innovation in educational technology. Over the past five years, we’ve implemented several initiatives that reflect this focus.
For example, we introduced a 4-day workweek (4DWW) to give our team the space to work more effectively and improve work-life balance. Despite this shift, we’ve continued to maintain world-class support, and I’m proud to say that this approach has had a direct impact on our employee satisfaction. Pressbooks recently achieved an Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS) of 63. This is significantly higher than the industry benchmarks of 23 for all industries and 22 for software companies, according to Workleap.
A happy and balanced team is crucial to our ability to deliver value to our clients—by reducing burnout and fostering a people-centred culture, we’ve been able to sustain high levels of productivity and support. We recognize that a healthy work culture ultimately benefits our clients, ensuring we can continue to provide responsive, effective service and deliver valuable features.
I believe that fostering this environment also means embracing authenticity in the workplace—something I try to model every day, as seen in the bib photo featured here, which I’ve shared more about in this LinkedIn post.
If you’re interested, I’ve written more about our 4DWW experience in my posts Doing More with Less and Embracing the Four-Day Workweek.
Additionally, we revamped our onboarding experience, ensuring new team members felt welcomed, supported, and ready to contribute from day one, as detailed in our post, How to Onboard Humans.
Perhaps one of our proudest achievements is being recognized as a Great Place to Work®—a testament to the dedication and passion of the entire Pressbooks team, as shared in our post How Pressbooks Became a Great Place to Work®.
The Road Ahead: Leading Pressbooks Into the Future
Stepping into the role of CEO is a tremendous honour, and I’m excited about what lies ahead. Hugh McGuire, our Founder and Executive Chairman, wrote a thoughtful post about his decision to step down. I encourage you to read the full announcement. His leadership has been instrumental in shaping Pressbooks, and I’m grateful for the foundation he’s built.
As we look to the future, what excites me most is the opportunity to continue pushing the boundaries of how DIY digital publishing can support learning and student success for the open education community and beyond. At Pressbooks, we are committed to improving how we serve educators and learners, and we’ll continue to listen to our community to address their most pressing needs. We remain focused on enhancing accessibility and other key areas to ensure that Pressbooks continues to be a powerful tool for our users. For more information on the future direction of Pressbooks, I invite you to join me at our CEO Town Hall (more details below).
Additionally, I was touched by the overwhelming support I received after sharing the news of my transition on LinkedIn. The warm reception reaffirmed my excitement about leading Pressbooks into its next chapter.
Come Chat with Me at Our Next Product Update
I’m excited to announce that I’ll be hosting a CEO Town Hall during our next Monthly Product Update on September 26th. During the Town Hall, I’ll be sharing insights from our latest CSAT survey, which highlighted some exciting results: we achieved a Net Promoter Score (NPS) of 59. For those unfamiliar, NPS is a common metric that measures customer loyalty by indicating the proportion of clients who are strong advocates for a product or service (minus the proportion who are detractors). The average NPS for software companies is 30, so this result reflects strong customer loyalty and satisfaction. Additionally, 90% of our respondents rated us highly for ease of use and flexibility.
We’ll also share key feedback from our users and discuss how this input helps shape our thinking and priorities. While we continue to assess and explore future improvements, we’ll provide an overview of the areas we’re paying close attention to, ensuring that Pressbooks continues to meet the evolving needs of our community. I’d love for you to join the discussion and share your thoughts on how we can continue to grow and innovate together.
Join the Town Hall (via this Zoom link) on September 26 @ 2 p.m. EST
Thank you for your continued trust and support. I’m looking forward to leading Pressbooks into this exciting new chapter, and I can’t wait to continue this journey with all of you.
Warmly,
Başak Büyükçelen
Featured image credit: CharlieAJA from Getty Images
About the photos: Başak is known for showing up as her authentic self at work. Even if that means wearing a bib at lunchtime. She’s also known for her love of cats. 😺