Kendra Thompson Is Redefining Elevated Living — and She’s Just Getting Started

There are tastemakers, and then there are the rare few who architect an entire way of living. Kendra Thompson — founder of Create with Kendra and the fast-growing Redwood Social gathering series — belongs firmly in the latter category. What began as a deeply Northern California vision, rooted in Monterey Bay redwoods and a reverence for garden-to-table living, is now something with unmistakably national momentum.

Thompson operates at the intersection of interior design, culinary artistry, and real estate, and she has built something increasingly rare: a brand that doesn’t just look beautiful — it asks you to live differently. Her signature philosophy, bring nature in, is both a design directive and a life ethos. Real stone, hand-hewn wood, wildflower arrangements pulled from just outside the door. Her spaces feel like an exhale, and that quality, it turns out, is something people everywhere are hungry for.

That same sensibility runs through her culinary work. Thompson builds menus the way a director builds a film — around a single hero ingredient, then outward. Her Redwood Social dinners, intimate gatherings designed to reunite women with the lost ritual of the shared table, have earned devoted followings that extend well beyond the Bay Area. The concept travels because the need is universal: genuine connection, a beautiful setting, and the particular alchemy that happens when strangers sit down to eat together.

The next chapter is already in motion. Thompson is developing a destination retreat — cottages, immersive gardens, experiential programming — that would give her growing audience a place to fully inhabit the lifestyle she has spent years defining. The location may be California, but the vision is national. For Kendra Thompson, the future isn’t just well-designed. It’s a destination.

Disclaimer: Written in partnership with APG.