Rethink Next builds AI awareness education for people navigating a world where algorithms increasingly shape careers, opportunities, and daily life. Our programs blend foresight methodology, practical AI skills, and narrative identity work into experiences that build genuine awareness and agency — not just tool fluency.

We work with mid-career professionals, creatives on nonlinear paths, teams figuring out what AI means for how they work, and educators building community resilience.

Where We Come From

Since 2005, founder Dr. Gigi Johnson has been building and running Maremel Institute — a creative and learning laboratory where she has spent two decades experimenting with new forms of adult learning, collaboration, and technology-enabled education.

Long before online cohorts and digital learning became mainstream, Maremel was already in the field. Gigi built early YouTube channels for kids and adult technology education in 2004 and 2005, designed and ran early online conferences and global learning events, developed online courses for platforms including Learning.ly/The Economist, Curious, and Udemy, and brought programs to participants in Spain, Beijing, Copenhagen, and Abu Dhabi.

For ten years, Maremel has produced audio and video podcasts documenting how practitioners, educators, and technologists navigate change in real time — including Innovating Music, Creative Innovators, and Amplify Music Conversations. These weren’t interview shows for their own sake. They were ongoing field research into how people adapt when systems shift.

When the pandemic hit, Gigi co-produced Amplify Music — two international virtual summits supporting local music communities during massive disruption — together with RethinkNext.org, the nonprofit that ran parallel programming during that period.

In 2024, Maremel Institute became Rethink Next LLC, bringing these threads together under one roof: AI awareness education, foresight methodology, and twenty years of learning by building.

Current Programs

Career Engine — A self-paced program for mid-career professionals and career changers navigating AI-mediated hiring. Six modules, live cohort sessions, practical toolkit for understanding and working within systems that now sort applications, filter candidates, and shape visibility.

FuturesJam — Collaborative workshops for teams and communities mapping AI-mediated systems and designing practical responses. Participants leave with shared language, clearer options, and a map of what to watch next.

Our Founder

Dr. Gigi Johnson is an educator, futurist, and systems thinker with over two decades of experience designing programs at the intersection of media, technology, and learning. She is UCLA Emerita faculty and former Executive Director of UCLA’s Center for Music Innovation and the Center for Media, Entertainment, and Sports at UCLA Anderson. Her background spans creative strategy, futures education, and media finance across higher education and global entertainment.

She founded Maremel Institute in 2005 and has been building, testing, and iterating at the edges of learning and technology ever since. Maremel became Rethink Next LLC in 2024.

For more information, go to gigijohnson.net.

Maremel Studio

Rethink Next operates alongside Maremel Studio, where Gigi’s more experimental and creative projects live. Maremel Studio is currently producing Gold Key Archives, a speculative storytelling project exploring imagined futures through archival fiction.

Organizational Note

Rethink Next operates as an independent limited liability company (Rethink Next LLC). Earlier nonprofit initiatives collaborated on earlier elements of the work, but all current programs and partnerships are delivered through the LLC.