Developed the company’s iconic cast of characters, early social media stunts, and immersive learning content—including stories, podcasts, and AI-powered roleplaying experiences—reaching more than 500 million learners worldwide, to make Duolingo a household name brand, synonymous with learning and fun.
Fast Company: Duolingo wants to be the ‘Sesame Street’ for adults
Duolingo’s Cute Owl Mascot Is a Ruthless, Terrifying Sociopath with Nothing to Lose
We won April Fool’s 2019, leading to all time highs for Duolingo in social media reach, daily active users, and revenue, by leaning into popular memes that Duo the owl was a little too aggressive — setting the stage for Duo’s later conquest of social (masterminded by Zaria Parvez) two years later.
By fall 2019, with SNL’s Duolingo parody, we were starting to become a household name (we had nothing to do with this sketch).
Our award-winning podcasts in French, Spanish, and English amassed a fiercely loyal audience over five years and 300 episodes of real world stories, frequently topping the Apple podcast charts, winning the Webby for Best Education Podcast, and showing the Duolingo brand could tackle almost any subject matter.
Though now replaced as listening practice by the lesson-aligned, multi-language “Duolingo Radio” format our studios team developed, the full run of podcasts is still available here.
Over five years of character development, animatedexperiments, and deep work with generative voices and procedural animation culminated in Video Call (with Lily), a product finally allowing real time speaking practice at scale, driving the hit Duolingo MAX subscription offering.