Kelsey Dempsey '22

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Kelsey Dempsey '22 is a social media content creator at Duolingo, creating viral content that has generated over one billion organic impressions. Honored recently by AdAge at their NextGen marketing conference in New York as one of “24 Gen Z’ers to Watch in Marketing,” Dempsey credited her experience on the UCLA Student Affairs media team as crucial to her early career success.

From the AdAge website:

Kelsey Dempsey likes to say she has been “breaking the internet at least once a year since 2020.” Dempsey got her start as the TiKTok manager for UCLA housing, where she grew the account from 2,500 to 20,000 followers thanks to her viral comments on Bama Rush videos. After graduating, Dempsey was hired at Drumstick, where campaigns like the “Don’t Look Inside the Filter” AR challenge and the “Levantenseee!” sound helped Drumstick go from 32,000 to 1.2 million TikTok followers in one year.

Most recently, Dempsey became one of the minds behind Duolingo’s head-turning content. Dempsey was a campaign and social content lead for the brand’s Charli XCX campaign, wrangling more than 20 Duolingo employees wearing owl heads in the general admission pit of one of Charli XCX’s shows.