About Orbilius
The Name is New. The Work Isn’t.
Orbilius grew out of more than three decades spent questioning how school works and building alternatives when the usual structures got in the way. Across public and independent schools, that work has ranged from new courses and interdisciplinary programs to the Mastery Learning System at Avenues, a three-year learning environment built around student agency, meaningful work, and mastery.
Over time, one idea became harder to ignore: schools can ask a great deal of young people and still be deeply human places. Orbilius is the next chapter of that work. It is an education R&D and design venture grounded in the belief that human flourishing should be part of the purpose of education, not an accidental by-product.
We care less about innovation as a label than about whether an idea can actually hold up in a school. It has to work with real students, real teachers, real schedules, and real constraints.
Orbilius exists to help close the gap between what education could be and what schools can actually build.
Founder
Mark Gutkowski is an award-winning educator, program designer and systems thinker whose work centers on student agency and the structures that shape learning. At Avenues New York, he created and continues to lead the Mastery Learning System, turning research on agency, mastery and meaningful work into a multi-year educational model. He has served as a Global Academic Dean on the Tiger Works R&D team, where he helped extend Mastery-related work across Avenues’ global network.
Before joining Avenues, Mark spent 18 years in public education. At Morristown High School, Mark redesigned the Latin program around a self-paced model and co-founded the interdisciplinary Classics Academy. Both were early examples of a pattern that would define his career: questioning inherited structures and building alternatives.
His thinking is deeply informed by Self-Determination Theory and Positive Psychology. He has presented at the International Self-Determination Theory Conference, participated in the Imagination Institute’s Education Imagination Retreat at the University of Pennsylvania, and spoken at Google’s AI for Learning Forum, held in partnership with Google DeepMind. His work has also been recognized by Princeton University and the New Jersey Department of Education.
Ready to talk?
If Orbilius feels like the kind of partner you’re looking for, we’d be glad to hear from you.