A Marin County native, Kendra Boutell is a fourth-generation Californian. Her father's family, Irish Famine immigrants and descendants of British and Pennsylvania Dutch colonial settlers homesteaded in Fresno and labored in Bakersfield's oil fields. Her mother's Azorean relations worked in Sacramento's agricultural fields. Growing up in a bohemian Bay Area community, Kendra attended UCSC, majoring in Art History. Wurster, Bernardi & Emmons designed her Oxbridge-style residential college, and landscape architect Thomas Church planned the forested campus. With this aesthetic background, she gravitated to San Francisco's Design District, beginning a career at the prestigious showrooms Shears & Window and Kneedler Fauchère.

The experience introduced her to iconic California designers, including Tony Hail, Michael Taylor, Orlando Diaz-Azcuy, Gary Hutton, Kalef Alaton, Jerry Leen, and Leo Dennis. Kendra worked for the antique dealers Therien & Co., Ed Hardy San Francisco, and Urban Chateau during the nineties and noughties. Participating in The San Francisco Fall Show, she encountered the national and international design world. The antique landscape changed with the Great Recession, and Kendra began writing and editing for design publications. She followed in her father's footsteps, an HR professional who moonlighted penning short stories for mid-century men's magazines, and her grandmother, a journalist at The Bakersfield Californian.

Still passionate about antiques, Kendra assists Eric Petsinger of Epoca in his exquisite booth at the San Francisco Fall Show each year.