CPO & Co-founder · Parrot
Julia Hudea
Julia leads product at Parrot. She brings an engineer's habit of testing every design against what learners actually need, so that learning a language is both fun and effective.
About Julia
Julia Hudea is the CPO and co-founder of Parrot (YC F25). She leads product, and she talks with learners on regular feedback calls, which she calls the best part of her day. Her focus is a product that is fun to use and also gets people fluent: "Language learning shouldn't be just a mindless game," she says. "It can be fun while also being effective."
Julia holds two degrees from the University of British Columbia: a Bachelor of Applied Science in Mechanical Engineering and a Bachelor of Computer Science. Before Parrot, she spent years in medical device development. She was a Biomedical R&D Engineer at Arbutus Medical, and as a mechanical engineering co-op at Verathon she designed test fixtures for GlideScope intubation products. On the UBC Biomedical Engineering Student Team, she helped build a low-cost traction device to treat femur fractures in low-resource settings.
Her capstone project, a hand-held device that delivers hemostatic powder through a catheter to treat upper gastrointestinal bleeding, won a Capstone Design Award. She also received the GEYER Family Award in Biomedical Engineering, which recognizes students with an entrepreneurial spirit and strong leadership. That work taught her to turn what users need into measurable requirements and to test every version against them. She uses the same method at Parrot, where learner research decides what gets built.
Julia met Amir Hanna in an entrepreneurship class at UBC, where they built a pharmacy voice assistant together. The project worked, but it did not matter to them the way language learning did. Forbes later featured Julia and Parrot among the top startups to watch from Y Combinator's Fall 2025 batch.
Outside Parrot, Julia speaks English and French. She co-led the UBC Technology in Medicine Club and volunteered for nearly three years with the Greater Vancouver Food Bank.
Areas of expertise
- Product management
- Learner feedback and research
- Mobile and web development (React Native)
- Engineering design and testing
- Medical device development
Find Julia online
Articles by Julia Hudea
Julia has not published on the blog yet. Read the latest posts from the Parrot team.