For more than a decade, Tanisha Colon-Bibb has built a career connecting creative talent with opportunities across borders. As the founder and CEO of Rebelle Management, she has worked across communications, public relations, talent management and brand strategy, helping artists, actors and creators build meaningful careers. After launching Rebelle Agency in 2012, she later expanded into talent management and established Rebelle Management South Africa in Johannesburg in 2022.

Perhaps what makes Colon-Bibb’s journey particularly compelling is that her story began long before the business. A first trip to South Africa at 17 would eventually lead to a life, career and family on the continent. Along the way, she navigated entrepreneurship, motherhood, depression, loss and the search for belonging.

 

For 10 Moments That Changed My Life, Colon-Bibb reflects on the experiences that shaped her, from the boarding school years that expanded her world and the first company she registered, to finding Jaxon, becoming a mother, navigating her mother’s stroke and discovering what it means to call South Africa home.

 

1. Boarding School

 

I grew up in Harlem and went to Phillips Andover Academy for four years. It became home. Boarding school taught me how to hold different realities at the same time. It expanded my frame of reference and made me more open to choices, experiences and travel that I might not have considered otherwise. It gave me an understanding that there was more than one way to live, and that the world was much bigger than the place I came from.

 

 

2. Seventeen, and a Plane Ticket

 

In July 2005, before my senior year of high school, I travelled to South Africa for the first time as part of a programme that integrated students from the US, Europe and Africa. I remember arguing over 50 Cent at breakfast, painting a township community centre and being scolded by my South African roommate for not putting lotion on my legs.

 

 

That trip planted a door that never closed. So much of my life can be traced back to it, from the company I built and the clients I work with to my son’s life. I had no idea at the time how much that experience would shape my future.

 

3. Registering My First Company

 

After college and my first job, I found myself without a clear next step. In July 2012, I started my first PR company, Rebelle Agency, with a small investment from my brother and a great deal of confidence.

 

 

I remember mailing the registration form and feeling like I had made my first real adult decision. I went from being someone with an idea to someone with an obligation. It was the moment I decided that I was allowed to build something without waiting for permission.

 

4. Jaxon, the Dog

I got Jaxon from my sister in 2016 after he jumped into her car in a Starbucks parking lot. He was already house-trained and had the most intense eyes. During a period of severe depression, walking him forced me to leave the house every day. Eventually, those walks helped save me.

 

Jaxon gave me a reason to get up, a reason to be needed and a reminder that I could be depended on. He steadied me during a time when I was struggling to find my footing.

 

5. My First Published Piece

I had written a poem for school before, but my piece for The Huffington Post was my first published work as a writer. It was about identity and my decision to stop using my middle name, Dariana, and return to my first name, Tanisha.

 

They paid me for the article, and that made writing feel real. It showed me that I could write professionally. The piece also led to me being quoted in two books and gave me the confidence to use my first name fully. In many ways, it helped shape the businesswoman I was becoming.

 

6. My First South African Client

 

My first South African client was Olwethu Njozola-Leshabane. We met at my first networking event after I gave birth. I was feeling vulnerable and raw, but I was ready to begin building something.

 

Olwethu was the MC at the event, and I got her number before we met for coffee. She was the first person in South Africa to trust me with her career when I had very little beyond my intentions. Meeting her at Paul in Polofields Crossing felt comfortable and familiar. She helped make South Africa feel local to me, rather than somewhere I was simply visiting.

 

7. The Last Night

 

The night before I was induced, I packed my bag and hugged my mother before leaving for the hospital. It was the last night before my life changed completely.

 

 

There was an edge to that moment. The person I had been before giving birth was coming to an end, although I did not know it yet. I think about that version of myself kindly. She had no idea what was coming, but she went anyway.

 

8. First Trip Away, I Am Fire

 

When my son was six months old, I left him with family and travelled to SXSW in Texas. I wanted to reconnect with the spontaneous person I had been before motherhood. During that trip, I got a one-word tattoo: “Fire.”

 

 

I realised that the person I had been was not gone. She had simply been covered by motherhood, not replaced by it. The tattoo became a reminder of everything I will always be, even as my life continues to change.

 

9. My Mother’s Stroke

 

After my mother’s 70th birthday, we spent time together with the grandchildren, having breakfast in the kitchen and going to the beach. A few days later, she continued to experience dizziness, so I took her to hospital. She had suffered a stroke.

 

My mother survived, but she was different afterwards, and so was I. The experience reminded me that I was still somebody’s daughter, not only somebody’s mother. It also ended my assumption that there would always be more time.

 

10. My Most Recent Mother’s Day Here

 

My most recent Mother’s Day in South Africa was a last-minute gathering at my friend Deborah’s home. We have a monthly gathering of mothers, but that particular day felt especially meaningful.

 

We were a group of women, none of us perfect, all of us navigating motherhood, work, family and life in our own ways. I have a career here, a home here and a son who was born here, but that was the first time I truly felt that I lived here.

 

I realised that community is not something you achieve. It is something you build and continue choosing. I stopped counting only what I had created and started paying attention to who I had created it with.