For more than ten years since her own IDC, Dive-Careers has worked with Marie-Lise Roux, right through to her becoming one of the most successful PADI Platinum Course Directors in the world. After more than a decade of great successes working together, Marie now embarks up on a new chapter with her partner Arnaud to start a family. Seems the perfect opportunity for us to take a look at the highlights and mishaps of Marie’s career over the past decade from Divemaster, dive shop owner, PADI instructor through to Course Director, from Egypt, to Thailand and onto Indonesia and Sri Lanka. Such a wonderful career to recap with a few photos and a couple of stories.
I first met Marie at Buddha Bar when her then partner, Bas convinced her to come to Koh Tao for the IDC. We had just had a Dutch speaking instructor leave, so there was an opening at Buddha View, Koh Tao for Bas to go straight into the team. Both Bas and Marie fitted in great right from the beginning.
Marie and Bas had come from Egypt. There they had met. Bas was doing his diver training and Marie, as a divemaster, had opened a shop with her Egyptian husband. This is sounding like a timeline of Marie’s relationships and not about her career as a diver. Not meant to be that, but I guess relationships have also followed her career around the world. Anyway, Bas swept her off her feet, probably with a bottle of vodka, and they left to get married on the shores of South Africa, a destination they would return to as Course Directors for Dive-Careers a decade later.
Marie found work straight after her IDC on Koh Tao with Coral Grand and later came back to work with Dive-Careers and Buddha View. Not only bringing a second language with French and a great personality but also a strong marketing acumen, she quickly made for herself a successful career as a dive instructor. She has always done very well with getting people eager about dive courses right from open water through to the IDC. Whether communicating on email or in person, that passion and enthusiasm she feels towards the dive industry is clear. This is why I pushed her towards Course Director and wanted her working with me.
Marie started off as a Course Director with Dive-Careers on Koh Tao in 2015. After so many years on Koh Tao, she had such a great base of friends and social network that guaranteed her successful IDCs on Koh Tao right from the beginning. Her IDCs have always been fun and a great social atmosphere. It is even how she met her now partner and father of their soon-to-be child. Obviously very sociable events.
I have relied on Marie for so much, from making sense of my accounts, keeping Bas in line and keeping up with the emails, through to being called out of bed in the middle of the night and told to find a way to Bunaken to start an instructor course the next day when I have been stuck at a border with passport problems. No complaints, maybe a quick snipe at my organisation abilities, and then she would just buckle down and get it done. Turned up the next morning, half a world away and got the IDC completed.
The last couple of years Marie has been based on Indonesia where she has made many new friends and reunited with many old friends in the dive community. She has also been conducting the IDCs in Sri Lanka for Dive-Careers and Poseidon Dive Station where she has developed the respect and admiration of the local diving community. That great sense of community has always been so strong with Marie.
She has been a great asset to Dive-Careers and she has been an excellent mentor to so many of you. Of course, we wish her the best with this new path as a mother. But of course we wish to find a way to keep her part of the team, to keep her working with us and in touch with all of you. This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. will stay an active email. She will be working at home from Canada helping out that Dive-Careers community and finding new members. And maybe soon, especially as that cold Canadian winter starts to bite, we might just be able to tempt her back to Asia for an IDC or it might just be time to expand to Dive-Careers Americas?
