Creative Tech Futurist +
Transformative Experience Creator

Gigi works with partners to explore where creative work and human-computer connected systems are going in an AI- and digitally accelerated age.

Gigi co-founded Rethink Next in 2018 and the Maremel in 2005 to explore digital disruption in how we work, learn, and create.   She has built conferences, training, events, research, and learning media around helping leaders and groups work with next-generation technology and evolving communities.  Through Maremel, she has advised leaders in start-ups and larger organizations in media, music, and education.   At Maremel she is building virtual and immersive worlds and experiences.

Dr. Johnson speaks around the world on digital transformations — both in the past and in the extended future.   Through Rethink Next, she also is running immersive events and collaborations on the possible futures of creative work in local communities.  Rethink Next also runs the Amplify Music Communities programs, launched during the Pandemic in 2020.

She taught at UCLA for 22 years before branching back to creative and collaboration work at Maremel and Rethink Next in 2021.  She taught at UCLA Herb Alpert School for 11 years in music innovation and advanced marketing, and she produced and hosted the UCLA podcast “Innovating Music.”  For 5 years, she ran the UCLA Center for Music Innovation, a think-tank on future music technologies and systems change.

Before UCLA Alpert, she ran centers and graduate and executive courses on digital disruption at UCLA Anderson for a decade, after years of financing media M&A at Bank of America.  Gigi also has run 2 VOD networks and produced 8 years of concerts, 3 early web series, and 2 family music albums.

She speaks across the world on digital disruption and social change — and is working on new programs to rethink time, place, and events…including conferences and education.

Gigi holds a doctorate in educational leadership for change and media studies from Fielding Graduate University, an MBA in finance and entertainment from UCLA Anderson, and a BA in Film/Television Production from USC Cinematic Arts.