Dr. Gigi Johnson
Co-Founder and President, Rethink Next and Maremel Studio
Reimagining Decisions, Futures, Collaboration, and Experiments in an AI-Embedded World
- Co-Founder of Rethink Next, researching how to build a broader future together while AI is narrowing discovery, decisions, and imagination
- Keynote speaker on human systems and technology-driven change
- Creator in AI, XR, and digital music
- 25-year explorer on how new technology reshapes creative and organizational work
Creative Tech Futurist
Transformative Experience Creator
Gigi Johnson has explored where technology changes what we find, choose, and build for more than 25 years, across creative work, digital media, regional communities, finance, and education.
She co-founded Maremel in 2005 and Rethink Next in 2018 to work with organizations on how digital and AI technologies disrupt and rebuild the way we work, learn, and create.
Rethink Next studies a change most people haven’t caught yet: AI systems are narrowing discovery, possibility, and organizational imagination. Gigi builds programs, research, and media that name what AI quietly cuts from view, and expand our abilities to co-create bigger, non-scripted and non-marketed futures.
Dr. Johnson speaks around the world on digital transformation, past and future. Through Rethink Next, she runs immersive events and convenings on the future of creative and organizational work. Rethink Next also ran the Amplify Music Communities programs, launched during the pandemic in 2020 and 2021, connecting 30 regions and 40+ partner organizations.
She taught at UCLA for 22 years before returning fully to Maremel and Rethink Next in 2021. At UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music, she founded and led the Center for Music Innovation for five years, a think tank on future music technologies and systems change, and produced and hosted the podcast Innovating Music. Before that, she ran centers and executive courses on digital disruption at UCLA Anderson for a decade, after years financing media and technology deals at Bank of America.
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.