Not all heroes wear capes. Some, like Kendra Mays, rock sneakers, sweats, and leggings. her superpowers are designing and building, and she’s using those powers to help rebuild Altadena after last year’s firestorm destroyed over 9,000 buildings and claimed at least 19 lives.Mays is an interior designer and general contractor with over 30 years in business, helping people bring their home visions to life.
Growing up in Dallas, she was a self-described busybody who found herself sawing in her grandmother’s shed, rearranging furniture without permission, teaching herself how to sew, loved crafting and woodworking, and also had a lot of fun walking around on rooftops when her roofer grandfather would take her to work with him.
“I was just very curious. I always had this expansive creative imagination,” mays told EBONY. “I feel like that’s where God talks to me. He talks to me in my imagination. I’ve always been very creative. I was very poor, so we didn’t have all the toys and stuff like that, so I used my imagination and it worked for me.”
When Mays was a young adult, the tragedy of losing her brother and also going through a divorce inspired her to relocate to California, where she launched Kendra Mays Designs. She got off to a rough start, unable to land clients, partly because people were taken aback by seeing a young Black woman in an industry that isn’t very diverse.
“I didn’t get any work. I really feel like it was as there was nobody out there like me. All the general contractors were old, seasoned white men, and the designers were old, seasoned white women,” she saeid. “It just wasn’t a lane for me, and so I struggled to get business, so I would have to go and work another job and still work the business, but that wheel inside of me, it just wouldn’t stop, and because I didn’t stop, it led me to where I am today.”
