Meet Devina D

We were lucky to catch up with Devina D recently and have shared our conversation below.

Devina, thanks so much for taking the time to share your insights and lessons with us today. We’re particularly interested in hearing about how you became such a resilient person. Where do you get your resilience from?

My resilience started building from a very young age. Throughout my childhood, I had to juggle various pressures while also navigating a childhood of trauma. I balanced the demanding nature of school, competitive chess, piano, taekwondo and more along with personal struggles that went on in my home life every day. Each of the activities I did required intense focus, discipline, and dedication. Navigating it all especially while dealing with personal challenges taught me how to stay strong and persevere and shaped my ability to push through tough situations, maintain focus and adapt in the face of adversity. All these qualities have been invaluable in my personal and professional life as a young adult.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?

I am a professional chess player that specializes in coaching, streaming, content creation and event hosting. After 10 years of being a chess player as a kid, I eventually quit the game at 17, wanting nothing to ever do with it again and threw away most of what I owned chess related. A couple years later, with the pandemic beginning, streaming chess on Twitch became very popular and a couple friends brought me back to the game to try streaming out for fun. I began streaming around May 2020, coaching shortly after to make an income for myself while in college, and the rest has been history. There are special aspects to what I do in all areas of my chess work. Coaching and streaming chess has given me the opportunity to meet and help people of all ages, all around the world, all different levels and all in different stages of their life. These avenues give me the chance to come together with so many people to speak a language that we all have in common: chess. Content creation allows me to use my platforms to express myself and share and combine my passions such as chess and mental health. For almost two years, I’ve been hosting unique online chess events that bring together players of all levels on Twitch, Kick, and YouTube. Each event has a fun twist or challenge, making it unlike anything else currently out there. It’s all about creating a lively, engaging and positive atmosphere to hype up as many chess streamers as possible within the community and celebrate the game in a fresh and exciting way!

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

Three factors that have been the most impactful in my journey have been my resilience, discipline and community building. Building resilience meant I kept bouncing back from challenges and kept pushing forward. There have been countless times through home life or the multiple high pressure activities I did growing up where I wanted to give up and not care anymore. But, I knew for my future self, I had to keep pushing through and stay resilient towards each next goal and through each next challenge. My advice is shift your mindset to each challenge and obstacle is the opportunity to come out of that tunnel stronger than you were before and grow one step closer into the person you want to become. Growth and anything worth fighting is not easy, but you right now and your future self and life is worth fighting for. So, stay resilient and keep fighting for yourself.

Discipline has been instilled in me ever since I can remember. Activities like chess, piano, taekwondo and school that were such big parts of my life every day for over a decade taught me the value consistency and making choices that aligned with my long term goals. It is easy to look at your goals and know where you want to be and what you want to do but the actions every single day to get there, regardless of the challenges that you might face, is not as easy to have the motivation for. What I have learned is that motivation comes through discipline. Through the practice of discipline in different areas and slowly seeing results, that is what then brings motivation to keep going and seeing even more results. This skill has been pivotal in building a successful event-hosting career and running multiple projects simultaneously in all my different areas within work and outside of it. My advice is to prioritize tasks and set realistic goals—break things down into manageable steps and consistently stay committed to them.

A sense of community has been a really important part in my transition from childhood to adulthood. I did not have much of a sense of community growing up and as an adult, I do not have family and it is not easy to make friends in my line of work. However, I cherish the community that I have been building for the last few years and the friends that I have made from all around the world. I have made genuine connections, have people to talk to about anything, and building a sense of community has been a huge part of my work with event hosting online. To engage with different streamers and foster a fun and supportive environment with participants and viewers has made the events super special. Community is different for everyone so my best advice is to be authentic and genuine. Find ways to add value to your community as well because you are unique and can always provide something new.

How can folks who want to work with you connect?

Yes, I am always open to collaboration and love the idea of working together to create something great to make an impact! My two biggest passions are chess and mental health. So, I’m always looking for individuals or organizations who are passionate about chess, community and creating fun and innovative experiences for people. I also am very passionate about mental health advocacy, related to chess but also in general given my personal story of a background of childhood trauma. If you are also share this focus and want to work together on initiatives that help raise awareness to support mental health, I am happy to connect! Please feel free to reach out to me through email or social media and let’s make something happen!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.devinadev.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/SimplyDevina
• Twitter: https://x.com/SimplyDevina
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@SimplyDevina
• Other: I livestream on Twitch which is where I hang out with a lot of my community while playing chess! https://www.twitch.tv/simplydevina