Dr. Gigi Louisa Johnson

Board member, speaker, advisor, technologist, connector, educator, and creator.

Currently, she is working with partners to look at managing and learning in virtual and hybrid environments as well as where creative work and systems are going in an AI- and digitally accelerated age. Gigi co-founded the Maremel Institute in 2005 to explore digital disruption in how we work, learn, and create.   For 15 years, 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.  Dr. Johnson speaks around the world on digital transformations — both of the past and in the extended future.   Through the non-profit Rethink Next, she also is piloting collaborations on the futures of creative work in local communities. 

She has 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 (2004-2007), and 2 family music albums.

She speaks across the world on digital disruption and social change — and is working now 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 from UCLA Anderson, and a BA in Film/Television Production from USC Cinematic Arts.