How Duolingo Gave a Junior Marketer Room to Build Duo’s TikTok Following

In a recent LinkedIn post, Noemi Kis✨ discusses how Duolingo gave Zaria Parvez an opportunity to shape the company’s TikTok presence, despite her having less experience than the job description requested. This article reports on Kis’s account and the lessons she draws from it; it is coverage of her post, not an article written by Kis.

“As a junior talent, I didn’t think I had a say,”

Kis recounts that Parvez joined Duolingo in 2020, at age 22, after advertising internships. The role called for two to three years of experience. While the company was producing educational content through a TikTok partnership, Parvez believed the platform could be used differently, but initially held back from sharing that view.

A chance to learn before leading

According to Kis, Parvez used her first year to learn how the company worked, offer feedback and advocate for her ideas. The turning point came after employees returned to the office, when Parvez spotted a large green owl costume in the human resources area. Kis presents that discovery as the spark for a new creative direction.

After the earlier TikTok partnership ended, Parvez asked to take over the account. Kis says the answer was uncomplicated:

“Yeah, just go for it.”

That permission gave Parvez room to test a more character-driven approach. In Kis’s telling, Duo began dancing on office furniture, provoking the legal team and pining for Dua Lipa. The owl mascot already existed; Parvez helped give it a distinct comic personality that audiences could follow.

From an existing mascot to a social character

Kis points to the account’s growth as evidence of what that creative shift achieved. According to the figures in her post, Parvez grew the following from 50,000 to more than 8 million during her first three years, then led a team that expanded it beyond 16 million. The post credits Parvez’s work while also emphasizing the organizational conditions that allowed it to develop.

What Kis says made the difference

Rather than attributing the outcome to a single viral idea, Kis highlights two decisions: Duolingo hired a candidate who did not meet the listed experience requirement, and the company later gave her latitude to pursue her own direction. As Kis frames it, the idea gained traction because someone inside the company listened before a large audience did.

“Before millions of people paid attention to her work, someone inside the company listened to her idea.”

Kis’s account offers a concise argument about early-career talent: experience requirements do not always capture a person’s potential, and opportunity can matter as much as credentials. Her post does not suggest that every experimental idea will produce millions of followers. Instead, it spotlights how trust and room to test a distinct voice helped Parvez turn a familiar mascot into a prominent social-media character.

For business leaders, the story Kis shares raises a practical question about how organizations hear junior employees. In her view, giving someone a chance and taking their ideas seriously can create the conditions for work that reaches far beyond the office.