On August 18th, Zaria Parvez announced she was leaving Duolingo after five years, eight billion impressions, and more viral moments with a giant Owl than we can count. So it was pretty big marketing industry news when a few days later it was reported that she would soon be the new director of social at DoorDash.
Parvez told AdAge, “It’s not just a one-person show—it’s a full content house dedicated to making social content. I consider myself a builder, and I think the DoorDash accounts just have a lot of space to build and grow. It’s kind of like a blank canvas of this established brand that’s done really cool things outside of social, and now it’s like, how do we bring that energy to social?”
The move to hire Parvez is a statement of intent for DoorDash, which grew revenue by 25% in Q2 2025 to $3.3 billion, and orders by 20% to 761 million. It has thrived in traditional advertising like its award-winning Super Bowl work in 2024. Chief marketing officer Kofi Amoo-Gottfried says this latest move is a continuation of how the brand has been investing in its social work over the past year.
“Up until about a year ago, this was an area I would say we were under-invested in,” says Amoo-Gottfried. Part of that was the nature of the company’s business—there was the brand building work, like the Super Bowl ad, and then a lot of performance marketing to drive immediate results for the business. But there was something missing.
Joining the conversation
DoorDash processes about eight million orders every day. Its name has almost become a verb. “Last year, we started to build out a team to really say, hey, we think this is an area of incredible opportunity for us, because of how much conversation is already happening on the open web around our product,” he says. “Millions of people are having a DoorDash experience every day, and they’re interested in sharing those stories, good or bad. There’s this conversation happening (online), whether we’re part of it or not. So last year, we started to say, let’s get into those conversations.”
The results were encouraging. In early August, the brand asked people to nominate teachers to get $500 DoorDash credits for school supplies and essentials. “That’s a way to tell you that we do back-to-school, but then created this incredible groundswell of conversation around amazing teachers, and then us being able to show up and be part of that and generate that,” he says. “So we’re doing a lot in this vein of finding these interesting, real stories that are happening already, and figuring out how we can participate.”
Still, Amoo-Gottfried says there are opportunities for organic social to really drive the business. He says there are two modes the team will operate on. The first is evergreen, brand building engagement with a focus on earned media. The second is utilizing promotions and moments to drive sales.
When the brand announced a Sephora discount for Dash Pass holders in July, for example, it took off with almost three million views on TikTok.
“What happened with that was completely insane, we had something like 800 beauty creators that we hadn’t paid that were all taking this and running with it,” says Amoo-Gottfried. “In these campaign moments, this team can have a direct commercial impact. We saw it that day, with record-breaking sales, and a lot of that was driven by the social and influencer team.”
Hiring Parvez is just the next step. “We think the world of her,” says Amoo-Gottfried. “I think she’s terrific.”
