CEO of DashFight — on remotely running a successful eSports business, her journey from an occupied city of Luhansk through charity work and the corporate world to a leadership role, why dreaming loudly is not naivety but strategy, and what real fulfilment in work actually looks like
Darina Briu did not arrive at the CEO role of DashFight through a straight line. Her story begins in Luhansk — a city that became occupied — and runs through a charity organization, the corporate world, and eventually into the eSports industry, where she now leads one of its most recognised platforms entirely remotely. Every stage of that journey required her to move when it would have been easier to stay still.
What makes Darina remarkable is not the résumé — it is the combination of genuine passion, hard-earned grit, and a dreamer's mindset that she has never been willing to trade away for the appearance of pragmatism. She dreams a lot, she says. And it turns out that dreaming a lot, done right, is how you build the life you actually want rather than the one that simply happened to you.
Serhii Beverly first met Darina about one and a half years before this conversation, when she spotted him on TikTok while preparing for the WebSummit in Lisbon and asked him to simulate negotiations with her. The conversation they had then stuck with both of them — and this episode is its natural continuation: longer, deeper, and with all the questions that matter most finally on the table.
Darina Briu is the CEO of DashFight, a leading platform in the eSports industry that she runs entirely remotely. Her path to that role is one of the more extraordinary career stories you will hear: it begins in Luhansk, a Ukrainian city that became occupied, runs through work in a charity organisation, continues into the corporate world, and eventually arrives at the heart of one of the fastest-growing sectors in digital entertainment.
What defines Darina is not any single role or achievement — it is the combination of qualities that got her through each transition. Passion for whatever she is working on. Grit when the circumstances made grit the only viable response. And a dreamer's mindset that she has refused to compromise, even when the world gave her plenty of reasons to become more cautious and more conventional.
Darina is also the host of a podcast dedicated to women players in eSports — a space where she is building something beyond DashFight, one conversation at a time. Serhii Beverly, who first connected with her over TikTok before the WebSummit in Lisbon, finds in Darina the kind of person who makes you want to reach further: someone who has designed her life rather than inherited it, and is still in the process of making it bigger.
the only person that keep you keep you uh from your best life is you and uh if you have anxiety for example or you unhappy you just need to write down the thing that you can control and things you can't control the things you can't control you can let go and think you can control you work on this with the plan
you don't speak a problem language you speak a solution language if you have if you need to have one and this is a key to success to normal healthy relationship on the work space in the friendship in the love relationship
right now I Define it as calmness as a normal read of life when you have balances and everything in in your life in your partner life in your just normal life so it's for me it's happiness when you are a little bit bored uh but eventually it's just lead to calmness