If you only know Zachery Dereniowski as the smiling guy on TikTok handing strangers life-changing checks, the story of how he got there might surprise you. The MDMotivator we see today — confident, warm, perpetually generous — was forged in one of the darkest stretches of his life. And almost all of it happened on the other side of the world, alone, in a city he barely knew.

This is the story of Sydney.

The Dream

Long before the cameras and the cardboard signs, Zachery had a different goal: to become a doctor and live in Australia. It was a specific, deliberate dream. He'd spent six years immersed in pre-med study after rebounding from his early academic stumble at the University of Windsor, and a student exchange program eventually brought him to Australia for the first time. He fell in love with the country immediately. The lifestyle, the energy, the sense of a fresh start — it all clicked.

So in January 2020, he made it official. He enrolled at the University of Sydney to begin medical school. Twenty-six years old, fresh off years of grinding, finally living the dream he'd been chasing since he was a kid in Windsor.

He had no idea what was about to hit.

When Everything Fell Apart at Once

Within weeks of arriving in Sydney, the world shut down. COVID-19 swept across the globe and Australia went into some of the strictest lockdowns on the planet. Borders closed. Cities emptied. International students were left in a kind of limbo — too far from home to leave, too restricted to actually live.

Then the pieces started falling, one after another.

His long-term relationship ended. For someone who had built a lot of his identity around that partnership, the breakup didn't just hurt — it disoriented him. He has talked openly in interviews about how that relationship had been tied to who he thought he was, and losing it felt like losing himself.

Then he tore his ACL. For an athletic guy who used the gym and sports as his primary outlet for stress, losing the ability to work out was devastating. The thing that had always pulled him out of dark moods was suddenly gone.

And underneath all of it: medical school was punishing. The workload was crushing on its own, and doing it during a pandemic — with no real social life, no friends to lean on, no easy way home — pushed him into a place he wasn't prepared for.

A Quiet Crisis on a Loud Street

Zachery has been candid in interviews about how deep that depression got. He's described it as bordering on suicidal. He spoke to The Drive Magazine about a specific moment that he says he'll never forget.

He was on a walk in the middle of the day in Sydney when he stopped at a busy intersection and started crying. Not a quiet tear or two — full, breaking-down sobs in a public place. And the businessmen and women around him just walked right past. Nobody stopped. Nobody asked if he was okay. He felt completely invisible.

That moment, more than the breakup or the injury or the pandemic itself, became the turning point. Standing there, sobbing, surrounded by people who didn't see him, he says he had a thought that crystallized everything: this isn't right.

Not just this isn't right for me. But this isn't right, period. People shouldn't be able to fall apart in plain sight while everyone else keeps walking.

Reaching for Help

To his credit, Zachery didn't try to white-knuckle his way through it. He reached out for support through his university's free counseling services. He started doing the work — slowly, awkwardly, the way most people do when they're trying to climb out of something heavy.

But he also wanted something more. He wanted to know if there was somebody else out there going through the same thing he was. So one day, on a whim, he opened TikTok.

The First Video

It was August 2020. He was still in Sydney. Still depressed. Still healing. He recorded a short video about lesser-known symptoms of depression — the things you might not realize are warning signs, the small details that he'd noticed in himself. He posted it without much expectation, then closed the app and went on with his day at med school.

He's said he honestly thought he might get fifty or a hundred views. Maybe a single message from someone who related.

When he picked up his phone again later that day, the video had crossed half a million views. The comments section was thousands of people deep — kids, adults, seniors. People from all over the world sharing their own stories, their own struggles, their own moments of feeling invisible. He sat there for hours trying to respond to every one.

That was the night he realized something he hadn't expected. He wasn't actually alone. Neither was anyone else.

Why This Story Matters

A lot of creators have an "origin story" that feels lightly dramatic and mostly polished — I used to work in finance and then I followed my passion! — and that's fine. But Zachery's origin story is something different. The MDMotivator project was not built on top of a great life. It was built on top of a broken one.

That's why the videos work the way they do. When he stops a stranger on the street and asks if they're okay, when he hands them a sign that says if you feel heartbroken or empty, hug me, he isn't performing empathy. He is remembering exactly what it felt like to be the person nobody stopped for.

The Sydney years are also why he ultimately walked away from medicine. Once he saw what was possible — the connection, the community, the actual real-world impact of one short video — he couldn't go back to a textbook. He's never framed leaving medical school as a rejection of being a doctor. He's framed it as following something that called to him louder.

What Came Next

Zachery eventually returned to North America, but the foundation of MDMotivator was already poured. The viral videos kept coming. His friend Patrick Glaz joined him as a videographer. The audience grew from thousands to millions. The signs got more creative, the stories more emotional, the community more devoted.

But the core of it — the part that hasn't changed in five-plus years — was forged at that intersection in Sydney.

He stopped because he wanted somebody to stop for him. He films now because he wants to be that somebody for everybody else.

Coming Up Next

He may go by MDMotivator, but the "MD" doesn't quite mean what most people think. In our next article, we'll dig into the medical school question fans constantly ask: did Zachery actually become a doctor? What does the "MD" really stand for now? And why did he ultimately choose psychology over medicine?

Sources

A note on this story: Zachery has spoken publicly about experiencing severe depression and dark thoughts during this period of his life. If anything in this article hits close to home for you, please know help is available. You can call or text 988 in the US and Canada to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, 24/7. You are not invisible.

This article is part of an independent fan site dedicated to documenting the work, life, and impact of Zachery Dereniowski (MDMotivator). We are not affiliated with Zachery, his team, Kindness Is Cool, the Mental Health Movement, the KindnessWithZachery Foundation, or any of his sponsors. All content is researched and written by fans, sourced from public material, and intended as celebratory and informational. To follow Zachery directly, visit @mdmotivator on TikTok or Instagram.