Like many other creators, Mary Kish started her particular pursuit—streaming games on the platform Twitch—as just a hobby. 

“Being a woman in gaming, I thought it’d be nice to find a community who enjoyed that as much as I did. It wasn’t something I did to make money,” Kish said.  

That later changed for Kish, now head of global community marketing at Twitch, who has more than 21,000 followers on the platform. She is part of a generation who sees online content creation as a legitimate career amid a booming creator economy estimated to be worth $104 billion in 2022. 

Since converting her hobby into a job in 2017, Kish has a message for others in the space: “I encourage all creators to start at the core, which is why you’re doing what you’re doing.