There's a certain kind of family that changes the energy of a street. You know them within a month of them moving in — not because they're loud, but because they show up. At the book drive. At the poker night someone finally organized. At the front door of the newest family on the block, holding a welcome bag and meaning it. In Ballantyne Country Club, that family is the Hightowers.
Kevin and Jessica Hightower moved to BCC about four years ago with their children, George, now eight, and Fiona, seven. Before Charlotte, they lived in the United Kingdom. Before that, Washington, D.C. The thread connecting all of it is aviation — specifically, the kind of aviation work most people never think about but that keeps the whole system running.
They met in D.C., both working in the industry from different angles. Jessica was at Human Solutions, a firm specializing in engineering, human factors, and aviation safety — the people who study why cockpit layouts work the way they do, and what happens when they don't. Kevin was at Lockheed Martin, building air traffic control systems for the FAA. Two people whose jobs existed to make sure millions of strangers got home safely, working a few miles apart in the same city.
Jessica grew up in Latrobe, Pennsylvania — the small town that also produced Arnold Palmer — and studied at Penn State. Kevin is from South Florida and graduated from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, one of the top aviation programs in the country. When Kevin's career took them to England, they packed up and went. When it eventually brought them to Charlotte, they did the same.
Today Kevin serves as Chief Innovation Officer at Cirium, the aviation data and analytics company whose technology powers real-time flight tracking and airline operations worldwide. Jessica has channeled her organizational instincts into community work. She's PTA President at Ballantyne Elementary — a role anyone who's been within fifty feet of a school fundraiser knows is basically a second full-time job. She also serves as Vice President of Prima La Comunità, a nonprofit focused on revitalizing small towns, a mission that connects back to her own roots in a Pennsylvania town that knows something about reinvention.
The Hightowers' community footprint in BCC goes well beyond the expected. They organize toy and book drives. They host poker nights. There's a summer toga party that has apparently become a neighborhood tradition. They welcome new members personally — not in a HOA-brochure kind of way, but in a we've-been-the-new-family-in-enough-places-to-know-what-that-feels-like kind of way.
"We love meeting new people and connecting families together," Jessica says. "Having moved a lot, we understand the importance of building a strong community."
That line lands differently when you know they've actually done it — rebuilt social networks from scratch in three different countries, figured out which grocery store has the good bread in each one. It's not aspirational talk about community. It's practiced.
George and Fiona are both active in school and community activities. The family pet is a rescued leopard gecko named Tok, who has been with them for four years. I'm told Tok is extremely low-maintenance but high on personality — the kind of pet that travels well, which matters when your family has lived on two continents.
If you're new to BCC, or even if you've been here a while and haven't crossed paths with the Hightowers yet, you probably will. They're the kind of neighbors who make the difference between living in a subdivision and living in a community — and in a neighborhood this size, that difference matters more than most people realize.
The Hightower Family is featured on the cover of the April 2026 issue of Stroll Ballantyne Country Club.