Alina Gribanova – Womenize! – Inspiring Stories
Womenize! – Inspiring Stories is our weekly series featuring inspirational individuals from games and tech. For this edition, we talked to Alina Gribanova, Business Development Director at Devoted Studios. She speaks about how her legal education and focus on strong team culture, trust, and strategic vision have shaped her successful career in business development and long-term partnership building in the gaming industry. Read more about Alina here:
Hi Alina! Looking back at your journey from law school to becoming a leader in business development within the gaming industry, what inspired your transition into gaming, and how did your educational background influence your career path?
I always knew I wanted to be part of something creative and engaging – something connected to the entertainment industry, whether movies, music, or interactive experiences, so gaming naturally resonated with me as a space that combined creativity, technology, and fun. My law degree turned out to be a significant advantage throughout my career. It was a strong door-opener and consistently made my background stand out, especially because legal education is widely recognized as demanding. While I never worked as a lawyer and focused entirely on business development, my legal training proved extremely helpful in negotiations, whether employment contracts or partnerships. Beyond practical skills, it strengthened my CV and helped establish credibility, particularly during my transition from Eastern Europe to Western Europe, where a solid legal background made a strong and lasting impression.
In your current role as Business Development Director at Devoted Studios, what excites you the most about driving innovation and forging partnerships in the mobile gaming space?
What excites me most is the power of team culture and how it directly translates into speed, trust, and results. The mobile gaming space is incredibly agile, fast even by gaming industry standards, often moving at ten times the pace, and that requires a team you can fully rely on. At Devoted Studios, I know I have that support: a team that moves quickly, adapts effortlessly, and has each other’s backs. This internal strength makes it possible to build truly thriving partnerships with outstanding partners and IPs. While mobile is a major focus, my role goes beyond it, and I also actively work across PC and console projects, bringing the same mindset to every collaboration weather that is co-development/engineering collaboration, porting or art creation.
With over a decade of experience in business development, publishing, and external development, what would you say are the key strategies for building successful, long-term collaborations?
This is a very good question, because successful long-term collaborations indeed begin with having a clear strategy and the mindset to own it. Over many years in business development, I’ve learned the importance of forming a strong vision for every potential project and using that vision. Successful long-term collaborations also begin with leadership and the internal culture, so then it becomes the foundation.
When a team is driven by a shared spirit, a clear direction, and a common goal, individual efforts naturally align into a single, well-functioning mechanism. Achieving this level of alignment is challenging, but once it’s in place, momentum builds organically. At the core of this process is trust, knowing it exists transforms how teams operate, how challenges are approached, and how success is ultimately achieved. Strong, trust-based relationships create the conditions where collaboration doesn’t just work, but consistently leads to meaningful, lasting results.