PODCAST · business
Creative Innovators with Gigi Johnson
by Maremel Institute
"Creative Innovators with Gigi Johnson" is a podcast about the people who are changing their worlds. In each episode, host and change agent Gigi Johnson interviews a different changemaker from a wide range of industries, including creative industries, software, education, sciences, and social innovation. The conversation moves from the guest’s personal history in creative work and innovation -- sometimes back into childhood and first creative directions -- and explores different routes and rabbit holes. We often discuss blockages, creative team choices, the benefits of bad decisions, and non-linear directions in a non-linear life.
Episodes
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Saraswathi “Vani” Balgam on Women in Animation and Global Storytelling
We have the pleasure of sharing the adventures of Saraswathi “Vani” Balgam -- from pioneering visual effects in India to founding her studio, Dancing Atoms, and mentoring future talents. From her early beginnings in the visual effects industry in India, Vani's drive and curiosity propelled her…
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A Creative Maestro - Mark Brymer Talks Show Production and Choral Arranging
I'm joined by the multitalented Mark Brymer, a creative entrepreneur with hands-on expertise in turning musical concepts into spectacular shows. Mark brings a wealth of experience — from arranging a vast collection (400,000) of choral pieces with Hal Leonard to producing dazzling shows in theme...
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Deirdre V. Lyons' Journey: From Immersive Theater to VR Innovation
Today's guest is a true pioneer in the burgeoning field of virtual reality theater: Deirdre V. Lyons. She'll share her groundbreaking work in VR at the Ferryman Collective, such as her innovative productions like "Welcome to Respite" and "Gumball Dreams," and discuss the intricacies of producing...
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Harry Abrams on Risk, Reward, and Representation in Hollywood
In this conversation, we are joined by a long-time innovator and entrepreneur in talent management — Harry Abrams. At the venerable age of 88, Harry reflects on a career where passion eclipsed paychecks, taking a step into adventure from lawnmower manufacturing in Indiana and instead taking a…
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Dreaming Up New Instruments with Mike Butera, Artiphon
Mike Butera has gone on some intriguing journeys, connecting music performance passions, philosophy and sound studies, and tech in creating new musical instruments for regular people to get into music. He shares his path to launching Artiphon after years in academic circles, ways he learned how…
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Jason Kramer on Keeping Music Discovery Human in the Age of Algorithms
Jason Kramer shares his journey to being an EMT during the AIDS Epidemic, LA Riots, and Northridge Earthquake to Fox Sports to KLOS and KCRW. He talks about the magic of Sunday nights, how he created and drove his own luck through persistent work, asking for opportunities, and taking on new...
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Dominique Wu on Building VR Community through Learning
Dominique Wu is a real leader in bringing together education and VR for regular people. She's created the XReality Pro program. She'll talk about what it's like to be an immigrant in the United States as a creative, a different story than we've had a lot of guests share. And she'll also talk…
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If I’m Going to Keep Evolving with Peter Kiesewalter, The Moth Project
Peter Kiesewalter creates at the divergent edge -- at the intersection of art and science. In this case, he's working at the edge of ecology and biology along with music and location-based entertainment with The Moth Project. It's a live experience in beautiful places with the stories of moths…
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Ask the Right Questions with Isaac Saldana, CEO, Memo
Isaac Saldana leans on two core values: asking the right questions and humility. Along with a good friend, he launched several companies. And several failed -- until he launched SendGrid in 2009. After learning to hire up with strong CEOs, the company went public in 2018. Since then, he has…
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Miki Agrawal on New Markets, Bold Choices
Some guests have a LOT of gumption and energy to create new. Miki is releasing her first album now. But over time, she has launched new companies and created new spaces. Some of the road has been bumpy and some has developed whole new categories that help people's lives. Guest: Miki Agrawal,...
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Mark Harper on Seeking Out Creative Opportunities
"I had no idea what I was doing." Mark Harper shares his story of going from ROTC to Combat Camera (leading teams of combat photographers) to Technicolor to high-end headphones to joining a startup military channel. He talked about each time where he sought out creative opportunities, the advice...
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Mike Polis on Creativity, Branding, Muppets, Yo Gabba Gabba, and other Adventures
Mike Polis started and ended with animation and graphic novels and cool creative content. In between, he has run marketing for Yo Gabba Gabba, Jim Henson, and other adventures. Mike shares his stories of how he moved from desktop publishing after college to food marketing, to DVDs for Universal...
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I didn’t just have one thing with Lafiya Watson Ramirez
From photography to musician websites to Flash to now AR, Lafiya Watson Ramirez combines visual and experience creation with storytelling. She tells her own story about how she moved from photography to web and interactive design into being inspired by Pokemon Go to pursue Augmented Reality (AR)...
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Bonus: Gigi Johnson on Postcard Moments
We are in post-production on new episodes, so our host, Gigi Johnson, shared a story about "Postcards" and Postcard Moments that has come up in prior episodes and in many recent conversations. She shares how a single postcard created a pivot that changed her direction when a TA offered the...
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Simplifying Complexity for Indie Labels with Bruno Guez
Bruno shares his saga from playing the drums and enjoying international music, mixing songs and culture from Tunisia, France, and LA. Those facets led to studying at UCLA Ethnomusicology, becoming a DJ at KCRW, and building a record label in his living room. He shared work in place-based music…
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Educated Luck and Building Digital Bridges with Dick Huey
[Enjoy our podcast this week that we share with our sister Maremel Network podcast, Innovating Music, that has just launched its fifth year.] Dick Huey claims that his career jumps have been "educated luck." "Because they they are luck. And I'm, I'm I don't ever pretend that I have more…
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Alfredo Muñoz on Architecture, Mars, and VR
Questions: How do we design for extreme conditions and resource challenges? Is that for Mars or Earth? Guest: Alfredo Muñoz, Architect; Founder; Onteco; Founder, ABIBOO Studio; Chair for Memberships of the Technical Committee of Space Architecture at the American Institute of Aeronautics and...
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Out on a Limb with Darryl Hurs
Question: How can you build a rich creative life based on referrals and going out on a limb? Guest: Darryl Hurs, Owner/CEO, Indie Week; Managing Director, Downtown Canada; Director, Market Development, Canada, CD Baby; Educator, Harris Institute In this episode, Darryl Hurs shares his journey…
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Music + India plus Ritnika Nayan
Question: How do you connect independent artists and music business in India as a young woman? Ritnika Nayan shares stories about her passion: helping indie artists succeed and make money through various avenues that they might have been neglecting. She does that in her main role: Managing…
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Arturo O'Farrill on Building Campfires
Question: How can you build campfires, mixing music and social activism? Guest: Arturo O'Farrill, Founder, Artistic Director, Afro Latin Jazz Alliance; Professor, Global Jazz Studies, The UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music, Associate Dean for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Arturo O'Farrill builds...
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Asking for What You Want with Shirin Laor-Raz Salemnia
Question: What can you do with focus on drive in both toys and STEM? And what can a persistent Shirin Salemnia do? Shirin shares a passionate tale of drive, success with extreme persistence, and then designing new businesses to give back. She talks about her journey through college, Mattel,...
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Jeremy Yuille on Making Sense Backwards
Question: How can life make better sense backwards? How can we weave together arts, spatial sound, architecture, and organizational change? Jeremy Yuille, with Meld Studios in Melbourne, Australia, works with organizations to transform how they work in the face of changing futures. His own past...
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AR and Love of the Lab with Ippolito Caradonna
Question: How can we use Augmented Reality to enhance the practice of collaborative biology? Ippolito Caradonna mixes his love for biology with his background in film and passion for assisted research. He is co-founding Aug Lab, an AR software interface for laboratory production that helps...
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Leaning Out Over His Skis with Jeremy Sirota, CEO, Merlin
Our first guest of Season 2 shares his tales of two loves: music and technology. His journey to Merlin includes early fandom in the Orange County punk rock scene, learning brand design in New York City while launching a mini fashion brand, and a road through technology law, Warner Music, and...
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Welcome to Season 2!
Welcome to Season 2 of Creative Innovators. We're going to have intriguing guests this season. Our question to you: Who inspires you? Who would you like to see on the show? We have great folks recording now as guests, and we'd like to include creative innovators who inspire our community. Hosted…
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That Was an Accident with Martin Atkins
Question: How do you decide what adventures to take in your nonlinear career? What are intentional plans vs. accidents? Photo: Kara Hammond and NARAS Martin Atkins talked with our host, Gigi Johnson, from his studio that also acts as a museum of all of the adventurous projects around his career....
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Tidbit Tuesdays - Postcard Moments and Planned Happenchance
This was fun. Your host, Gigi Johnson, has been speaking for college classes this past week and kept being asked to tell her/my story of the pivot points and non-linear decisions over 9 careers. So in this Tuesday Tidbit segment, I share the story of how I changed into a film major at USC based…
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A Very Human Culture with David Hernandez
Question: What if you could build a company around your passions? In this episode, David Hernandez shares how he is unlearning and relearning what he knows to create competition for his company . . . in his own company! He runs Colonize Media, a multiplatform network music aggregator. He has…
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Tidbit Tuesday - What is a Creative Career?
Today starts the first segment of Tidbit Tuesday, which brings in parts of the ReadytoZag program from Rethink Next. What is a Creative Career? What are we talking about when we throw around the term “creative career”? This could be having a traditional career in a creative industry, or it could…
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Ceremony and Story with Beatie Wolfe
Question: What if you could pursue the creative projects that you already saw in the world? In this episode, Beatie Wolfe takes us through her creative journey to become the technologist and artist she is today. Back when she was 7 or 8, she began to imagine the “music books” (album covers) that...
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Welcome to Tuesday Creative Career Sessions
Starting next Tuesday, we'll be sharing parts of the Rethink Next career exploration programs to tie in with the non-linear career stories from each of these podcast interviews. We'll be sharing each week on Tuesdays a bit of the programs we have been working on for a few years with groups on how...
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Finance, Story, and The Storm with Christopher Zyda
Question: What if you need to leave creative work to deal with crisis? How can you bring your creativity to other fields? In this episode, Christopher Zyda shares his journey through the 1980s AIDS pandemic as a young professional writer-to-be and his shift into finance to help care for his…
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Laura Escudé on Combining All Your Loves Together
In this episode, Laura Escudé takes us on her journey from violinist to adventures in Los Angeles as a seat filler for TV shows from Craig’s list to market research to other one-off jobs. . . until she becomes a tech support staffer at M-Audio because of problems she had with her own keyboard.…
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Dae Bogan on Seeing Solutions - A Blessing and a Curse
Dae Bogan shares how he sees solutions and “warps” them into business ideas -- which is both a blessing and a curse. He began with selling cakes in middle school and organizing bus tours in high school from Cleveland, OH to New York. From his early history in acting, singing, and creating and...
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This is our Future: Saving the Planet with Bas den Braber and Jenna Seiden
In this episode, we hear how Bas den Braber and Jenna Seiden are following their purpose with Zambezi Partners, a benefits corporation with a mission to eradicate African wildlife poaching during our lifetime. They both worked in large company business-to-business strategy, consulting, and brand...
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Tania Katan on Wearing a Cape This Whole Time
Tania Katan shares her wit and wisdom about how to use creativity to challenge with playfulness our rigid organizational cultures. She works with large and small companies, helping them find new alignment around their daily contradictions through “small c” creative work, facing everyday practical...
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Megan Elliott - Pirates, Magicians, and Wizards
Megan Elliott shares her journey from Australia and indigenous cultural media to trade union representation in Ireland to traveling across Asia connecting leaders and cultures . . before she was found on LinkedIn to bring her superpowers to Nebraska. She tells of the shared collaborative creation...
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An Incredible Experiment with Mark "Frosty" McNeill and Ale Cohen
Ale Cohen and Mark "Frosty" McNeill share their journey through “experimenting with sound” and community in building the Internet radio collective DUBLAB over the past two decades. They share what inspired and drove them to build this institution and how it has shifted gears in our…
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I Never Knew I was Supposed to Only Do One Thing with Arabian Prince
In this episode, Arabian Prince shares the rest of the story -- both before and after working with NWA. He shares how he got started with tech, entrepreneurship, and music creation at a young age. He talks with Gigi about how he taught himself new gaming and creative technologies, and how he…
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Composers of Tomorrow with Akira Nakano
In this episode, Akira Nakano takes us through his journeys in piano performance, music composition, video editing, and starting a non-profit. These led to the launch of the LA Inception Orchestra, which works with youth and composers to launch Composers of Tomorrow. He shares his experience in...
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Christopher Hope on Building Media Careers at The Loop Lab
In this episode, Christopher Hope shares his journey to found The Loop Lab in Cambridge, MA. He learned through DJing, community service, religious studies, and partnering with local organizations to deliver a unique blend of higher education, apprenticeships, and entrepreneurship training. He…
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Sasha Samochina on Solving Problems with Art, VR, and Software
In this episode, Sasha Samochina shares her journey connecting art, VR, and science together -- to her trio of roles at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). She illustrates why she is “thankful for [her] boldness” in interning and pushing into each new job and new technology. The Field Museum in...
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Social Proof and Pushing Forward with Ty Frankel
In this episode, Ty Frankel shares how as a young music creator and entrepreneur he pushed to create relationships to build Shut Down Media. His multi-country company creates hip hop music for integration into film and television. He talks about how he overcame obstacles, how he got distracted…
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Zack Zalon on That Moment of Mojo
Zack Zalon has shifted and grown along with a transforming music industry. He began as (and still is) a musician, then blossomed at the Troubadour before launching into websites, marketing, Farm Club, Virgin, and through that Moment of Mojo into taking his background and the now-possible world of...
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Slightly Against the Grain with Carlo, Ben, and Josh from Indie-Pop
Enjoy the tales of Carlo Fox, Ben Willis, and Josh Andriano working together as the three-partner independent music management company leadership team running Indie-Pop. After meeting when Josh and Ben married sisters (no longer in the picture), they formed Indie-Pop and have learned to work...
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Innovation is Messy with Jack Conte
Jack Conte blends the worlds of music creation (Pomplamoose and the funk band Scary Pockets) and solving creators’ problems with systems (crowdfunding and community with Patreon). He shares how he balances (or doesn’t balance at times) creating music with running a large tech business. He also...
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Ted Cohen on Everything Old is New Again
This week on the Creative Innovators with Gigi Johnson podcast, we are joined by Ted Cohen, who shared tales of doing things for the right reasons and seeing decades ago the dimensions of our current music streaming playlists and challenges. He talks about genuineness of artists vs.…
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Dmitri Vietze - Livestreaming and Live Connecting
A year ago, Dmitri Vietze launched a new thought leadership conference on music technology in Los Angeles and had to move it with one day's notice. This year, he has moved his whole thought leadership with Music Tectonics online with virtual conferences and community gatherings. He shares his...
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Welcome to Creative Innovators with Gigi Johnson
Welcome to the 2020 launch of the new podcast, Creative Innovators with Gigi Johnson. Gigi engages with innovators and creators who are changing the way that we create and reimagine in music, art, live events, virtual events, video, film, education, and social innovation. Guests share their work...
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
"Creative Innovators with Gigi Johnson" is a podcast about the people who are changing their worlds. In each episode, host and change agent Gigi Johnson interviews a different changemaker from a wide range of industries, including creative industries, software, education, sciences, and social innovation. The conversation moves from the guest’s personal history in creative work and innovation -- sometimes back into childhood and first creative directions -- and explores different routes and rabbit holes. We often discuss blockages, creative team choices, the benefits of bad decisions, and non-linear directions in a non-linear life.
HOSTED BY
Maremel Institute
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Creative Innovators with Gigi Johnson have?
Creative Innovators with Gigi Johnson currently has 49 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Creative Innovators with Gigi Johnson about?
"Creative Innovators with Gigi Johnson" is a podcast about the people who are changing their worlds. In each episode, host and change agent Gigi Johnson interviews a different changemaker from a wide range of industries, including creative industries, software, education, sciences, and social...
How often does Creative Innovators with Gigi Johnson release new episodes?
Creative Innovators with Gigi Johnson has 49 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to Creative Innovators with Gigi Johnson?
You can listen to Creative Innovators with Gigi Johnson on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Creative Innovators with Gigi Johnson?
Creative Innovators with Gigi Johnson is created and hosted by Maremel Institute.
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