Pauline Kitamura, a Toronto-born third generation Japanese-Canadian, is the founder of Adventure Divas.

Pauline enjoyed outdoor activities in the great Canadian outdoors ever since childhood and almost every weekend was spent mountain biking, canoeing, skiing, snowboading, camping, hiking and generally romping around outside. 

In 1997, she moved from Toronto to Vancouver to take on a new work assignment. Needless to say, she took this fine opportunity to further ramp up her outdoor activities by taking up trail running, kayaking and adventure racing (yes, she was very busy!).

Although Pauline had spent most of her life in Canada, she moved to Japan in 2002 when her Japanese husband finished his expat term in Vancouver. Pauline started a new job in finance in Tokyo and also continued to devote herself to adventure racing, which was still relatively new in Japan at the time. Leveraging her Canadian-based outdoor experience, she participated in many races in Japan and abroad and became a very active member in Japan's adventure race community.  

It was at this time that she realized that there weren't very many women in Japan who were involved in outdoors activities and outdoor sports. When she asked around as to whether other women were even interested in going out into the outdoors, the answer she received was a unified, resounding "YES!" They wanted to climb mountains, they wanted to paddle the oceans, and yes, they wanted to sleep in a tent and sleeping bag! They just didn't know how and never had the opportunity to do so. Thus, the motivation to start up Adventure Divas was born.

In 2008, Pauline quit her job as a Chartered Accountant to start up Adventure Divas. She also started writing regularly as a freelance writer for outdoor magazines in Japan and North America (in both Japanese and in English) to share her experiences.