'They don't talk about football all the time,' she says of her fellow board members. 'Maybe they did before I got here, but they certainly don't now.'
Kenrick is by no means a shrinking violet and is used to a bit of gender imbalance; before entering the world of marketing she made history by becoming one of the first women to join the RAF. There were 93,000 men and just 70 women, so it is unlikely that a male-dominated board holds much fear for the gutsy 40-year-old.
Unconventionality is one of Kenrick's trademarks. She lives near Buckingham with her husband at weekends, but home during the week is a flat in Winchester, which is nearer to the B&Q offices. She chooses this lifestyle because she hates the idea of a one-and-half-hour commute, something at which other a senior businesspeople wouldn't bat an eyelid.
Years spent working 'down South' may have softened her Newcastle accent, but Kendrick is a Geordie through and through and is always up for partying into the early hours.
That she came into marketing at all is largely down to the fact that at the time she was in the RAF it did not allow women to become pilots. 'It was difficult to move into marketing in as much as there was a whole lifestyle with the RAF that I had to walk away from,' she says. She does admit, however, that she would probably have ended up rebelling because 'all that discipline stuff would've driven me nuts'.
Kendrick's marketing career also has an unconventional air to it, having jumped from sector to sector after starting out at Mars. In each of her roles she has immersed herself in the brand: while at George, she wore only George clothing; and as head of regional marketing at Asda, she didn't shop anywhere else. Now, at B&Q, she can indulge her love of home improvement, which she claims was a passion of hers even before arriving at the retailer last year.
'I'm very fortunate in that I'm married to someone who's a very good DIYer. I come up with interesting and slightly outlandish ideas on what we might do around the house and my husband has to try to make them happen,' she says.
In many ways, Kenrick is typical of the type of consumer that B&Q is trying to attract through its female-friendly positioning and upcoming TV ads by JWT, which introduce the strapline 'Let's do it' and highlight B&Q own-brand Colours. Previously limited to paints, Colours now encompasses everything that goes into creating the look of a room, from wallpaper to soft furnishings.
Home improvement, says Kenrick, can no longer be just about DIY - DFY (Do it for you) has come into the equation. DFYers are consumers, mostly women, who are passionate about sprucing up their homes, but not interested in hard graft.
'B&Q is transforming itself into being about home improvement as a whole and what goes along with that is a bit of feminisation of the business - just a bit of rebalancing,' she says. 'It's not that we're walking away from the masculine, we're just bringing in a feminine side to complement it.'
The stores are changing to reflect this shift, and by the end of the year a third will have been converted to a 'shop within a shop' format, with 12 'shops' in each store selling everything from plaster and cement to lighting and tiles.
The change in strategy comes at a critical time for the retailer: its annual figures for the 12 months to February 2007, show that overall sales have declined by 1.7%, with like-for-like sales down 2.9%. Profits over the same period fell from 拢208.5m to 拢162.9m, reflecting the continuing softening of the DIY market.
Reversing these gloomy figures by targeting women will be no easy task but with Kenrick on the case, B&Q stands every chance of making this happen.
CAREER HISTORY
1988-1993: Graduate trainee rising to national account manager, Mars
Confectionery
1993-1996: Trading controller, Walkers Snack Foods
1996-1998: Head of regional marketing, Asda
1998-1999: Marketing director, George clothing (Asda)
1999-2001: Brand communications controller, Woolworths
2001-2002: Group sales and marketing director, Wilson Connelly
2002-2006: Marketing and communications director, Camelot
2006-present: Marketing and customer proposition director, B&Q