Kimberly Sentovich looks at every day as a pie, slicing each as she sees fit, and almost never coming up with equal pieces for her work duties and personal life. And that’s OK with the executive vice president, who oversees logistics and 1,306 stores for Gymboree Corp., a San Francisco-based children’s apparel and accessories retailer that posted about $1.25 billion in revenue in fiscal 2015.
“I gave up a long time ago (the idea) that there is any kind of balance,” said Sentovich, who was among five women honored at the 22nd Annual Women in Business luncheon on May 4 at Hotel Irvine (see related stories, pages 4, 6, 8 and 11). “For me, it’s all about figuring out how you’re going to divide that pie each day, and then when you’re in a section of a pie, be present and be there. When I’m going somewhere with my kids, I’m not going to be on my phone emailing someone from work, or if I’m at work, I’m not chatting with my friends.”
These days she carves out time to serve on the board of directors of Children’s Hospital of Orange County and has chaired the University of California-Irvine’s Chief Executive Roundtable, an appointment that expires this year. When she took on the role in 2013, she told then-Chancellor Michael Drake that she wanted to leave the alliance of business and university leaders in better shape than she found it—and she did.
“Under her leadership, the membership of the Roundtable has increased by 20% in the last three years,” Chancellor Howard Gillman wrote in a letter supporting Sentovich’s nomination for the Business Journal award. “It’s important to note that fully half of the new members she helped recruit are women business leaders, significantly increasing the diversity of the membership and making the group a truer reflection of the business community.”
Sentovich’s support of women stems from what she’s seen in the marketplace. Women, unlike their male colleagues, tend to “doubt themselves more,” including Sentovich herself.
“Every job I’ve taken, I’ve said, ‘I don’t know if I’m ready to do this,’” she said. “There’s a part of me that knows I’ve got good skills and that I can do certain things, but I never feel like I’m ready … One of the things I always tell people is, ‘Don’t worry about being ready. If other people are telling you you’re ready, then you’re probably ready—it’s just outside your comfort zone.’ Things that you think you are not quite ready for, you’ll learn some of them once you get there, but if you never take the chances and you don’t push yourself to do those things, you’ll miss opportunities. And if you don’t get it, you’ll get feedback on what else you still need to work on if that’s your goal.”
Sentovich started out with a philosophy and political science degree from Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania. She had her sights set on Wall Street, investment banking and business school, but a mentor urged her to work for paint maker Behr Process Corp. in Santa Ana as a regional sales representative. She was promoted to director of sales and marketing information services, and after three years with the company in 1993 joined Home Depot Inc., where she stayed until 2008. Sentovich took on several roles there, including global product manager for the paint and decor departments; vice president of merchandising for the company’s EXPO Division; and regional vice president of operations, in charge of Alaska, Hawaii and Southern California stores.
“I went from merchandising to operations kind of by accident,” she said. “My bosses said, ‘Hey, you should go be in operations, it will be a good experience for you.’ I said, ‘I don’t know anything about running stores,’ and they (said), ‘Don’t worry, you’ll learn.’”
She joined Wal-Mart Stores Inc. in 2008 as regional general manager and vice president for California. She served as senior vice president of the company’s Pacific Division, which includes California, Alaska and Hawaii, from 2010 to April 2015.
Her stint at Gymboree offered a new type of challenge.
“I worked for two really large, established companies, and Gymboree is a venture capital-owned company—smaller, a little bit more risky,” Sentovich said. “But I really wanted to take a broader role in a smaller organization so that I could learn some new things, such as logistics, which I’ve never done before. I have all of the store operations in the U.S. and Canada and all of our logistics, so everything from when merchandise leaves our factories to when it’s delivered to the back of our store or to our customers via e-commerce.”
Her “pie” slices sometimes include trips to the company headquarters in San Francisco and its distribution center in Sacramento, while she works mostly out of her office in Irvine.
“Right now I’m helping us prepare for where retail is going in the future, because more people are buying online,” Sentovich said.
“I still think stores have a place in people’s shopping world, and so it’s about how do you help your company to be set up for success in the sort of omni-channel world in the future. It’s what every retailer should be spending their time on for the next couple of years.”
