Spending time with Ken Minjare is like feeling the warmth of the sun with his ready smile and kind, easygoing way. Ken doesn’t observe life from the sidelines, he dives right in.

The native Kenyan’s passion for the ocean, diving and adventure started when he was six years old. His favorite shows “Ocean Girl” and “Gillette World Sport Special” sparked his fascination with the underwater world.

Twenty-four years later, Ken took his first breath underwater on a PADI Discover Scuba Diving experience in Watamu, Kenya. Anytime Ken traveled to the coast, he repeated the experience. In 2022, he earned his PADI Open Water Diver certification, joined PADI Club, and dove with fellow PADI Club members for the first time in the Florida Keys: “I live for building experiences, and diving gives me that,” he says, “I have met such cool people through diving, traveled, and experienced such precious, unbelievable life and moments under the sea.”

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Why PADI Club? “The experience is priceless, you could dive all over the world and join different outfits for organized trips, but PADI Club just does it differently. You get to meet famous dive professionals in different fields who share their insights with you, make friends from all over the world and test new and interesting equipment for Scuba Diving magazine.”

Always one for adventure, Ken also plans to climb all the top peaks in Africa before he turns 50 (he and his 12-year-old daughter Nyambura have already summited Mount Kenya together). Other interests include camping, motocross, mountain biking, horseback riding, reading sci-fi and spy novels, watching action films and hosting barbecues.

A bond trader by day, Ken shares his dive journey aspirations: “I want to do my Rescue Diver next. My final goal is to become a Divemaster, then an Instructor. I plan on opening my own dive center sometime in the future. I love the ocean and sea life, the peace and tranquility—the ocean always feels like endless possibilities.”

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Apparently the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree… Ken’s wife and two sons recently completed the PADI Bubblemaker program, and his daughter Nyambura is an aspiring marine biologist with many dives already under her belt. She and Ken recently dove Aliwal Shoal near Durban, South Africa, with Aliwal Dive Centre & Lodge. He described the experience as one of the best dives he’s ever done. “That experience spoke to my soul. We had dolphins, massive rays, dozens of sharks, and the most precious thing—humpback whales singing all through the dive. It was moving.”

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Despite overcoming distances to access diving, Ken shared this takeaway about how diving enhances his life: “Diving is beyond a sport—it connects you with a primal part of nature. A force so much larger and mysterious than we could ever fathom, and being able to even touch that in the smallest way is a priceless opportunity. Traveling as far and widely as you can to see all the oceans and reefs and caves and sea life and all else that’s under there should be every diver’s goal.”