Published on April 29, 2025
Shaping the Lingoda experience: Dr. Thomas Gigant, Head of Product, on empowering language learners
Dr. Thomas Gigant joined Lingoda with a clear purpose: to merge his love for teaching with his expertise in building impactful digital products. What drew him in was Lingoda’s bold ambition to help learners unlock life-changing opportunities—whether it’s studying abroad, advancing their careers, or connecting across cultures—combined with a humble, improvement-driven team spirit. In this interview, he reflects on his journey so far, the power of product innovation in education, and how he leads a remote-first team toward shared impact and growth.
I’m passionate about learning and teaching. Alongside my product career, I teach at a business school, so moving to a company dedicated to language and skills development was a natural step. Lingoda offered me the opportunity to marry that passion, my career and my enthusiasm for developing products at scale: Helping learners around the world unlock new possibilities through education.
What sealed my decision was the culture. From my first conversations, I sensed a team that combines ambition with humility and a genuine appetite for improvement. I thrive in environments with big challenges and even bigger potential, and Lingoda is exactly that.
Since joining the company, I have focused on stabilising the product organisation, setting priorities and laying the foundations for sustainable growth. With each improvement to our collaboration framework and product development cycles, we are building the capability to deliver exponentially greater value to our learners globally. The complexity is real, but the momentum, the shared purpose and the opportunity to shape the future of language learning at scale are profoundly energizing. I see a clear path forward where our product innovations can fundamentally transform how millions of people acquire language skills and open doors they never thought possible.
Product innovation at Lingoda is about much more than just developing features, it is about creating a meaningful and effective learning environment for our students and teachers. We focus on removing friction and enabling progress so that learners remain motivated and confident to achieve their goals.
At the heart of our product are our live classrooms, run by real, passionate teachers. We are constantly working to help them deliver the best possible experience while making the learner journey more personalised, goal-driven, and engaging.
Innovation here means improving every stage of the learning experience, from fantastic onboarding and early experiences to clearer progress tracking and smarter habit-building tools. It is about making it easier for students to stay on track and for teachers to focus on what they do best: Inspiring learning.
What excites me the most is Lingoda’s potential to evolve from a flexible learning platform to a truly trusted learning companion. We are not just helping people learn a language, but enabling them to achieve bigger life goals: attending university in another country, advancing professionally or connecting with others on a deeper level.
Over the next year or two, I would love to see Lingoda become the go-to destination for serious learners who want to achieve real results and are looking for guidance, motivation and support along the way. There is a huge opportunity in helping learners build strong habits, providing personalised guidance and accompanying them every step of the way. I am excited to see what we can do to elevate that experience and deliver real outcomes with heart.
I help support the three pillars of our remote-friendly culture: Clarity, trust and meaningful connections. We maintain structured rhythms with regular check-ins and clearly defined OKRs that ensure alignment across locations, while striking a balance between synchronous and asynchronous collaboration. My leadership philosophy focuses on evaluating outcomes rather than input. Team members co-create their goals with me and have the opportunity to organise their work in a way that works best for them.
Trust is foundational to our success. That is why I deliberately break down silos and foster cross-functional collaboration. I consciously model the openness and authenticity I expect from the team and create space for discussions and light-hearted moments that strengthen our cohesion.
While digital connection is our daily reality, we attach great importance to face-to-face meetings at our Berlin headquarters. These face-to-face interactions are invaluable for deepening relationships, sparking creative collaboration and strengthening our common goals in a way that digital tools simply cannot replicate.
I encourage anyone who wants to join us to come with a strong sense of purpose. At Lingoda, we are building something that truly impacts people’s lives by helping them learn a new language, access educational or professional opportunities, or forge deeper connections with others.
Secondly, bring curiosity, empathy and pragmatism. I value product managers who are deeply curious about our users, our business and the way things work, but who are also able to translate that curiosity into clear priorities and action. We are a team that values different perspectives. Each member of the product organisation brings their own background, strengths and way of thinking, and I believe that’s a real asset. At the same time, adaptability is essential. Not everything is clear from the outset. We are in a phase where designing the product also means designing the organisation, our processes and sometimes even the way we work. If you are someone who finds energy in this, who doesn’t mind rolling up your sleeves and who finds clarity through iteration, you will feel at home here.
Lastly, I would like to say this: care. Care about the learner experience. Care about your colleagues. Care about the craft. We want to build a product and a company that we are proud of, not just in terms of outcomes, but in how we get there. If that resonates with you, then Lingoda is a great place to grow and make a difference.
