08/25/2026
Okay, but what if we…?
If you’ve worked with Hillarye Hightower for long, chances are you’ve heard a sentence start that way. Curiosity, creativity 🎨, and an inability to leave a good idea 💡unexplored have been consistent themes throughout her two decades at Denton County Friends of the Family. Hillarye began her DCFOF career as a therapist and has brought that foundation to many roles. These days she’s our Director of Training & Outreach.
She’s chaos 🌪️, outspoken, fiercely mission-driven 💜, witty, a little unruly, and rarely content to leave things alone. Give her a room full of people and she’ll probably facilitate it. Give her a problem and she’ll cover a wall in ideas. Give her a microphone 🎤 and…..well, you’ve made your own choices…..
She believes deeply in helping people grow 💗- whether that means welcoming someone into their first week at DCFOF, developing emerging leaders, helping professionals sharpen their skills, or challenging all of us to think differently about the work we’ve done for years. But ask the people who work alongside her what really defines her and another theme emerges quickly: she will get in the trenches with you. She is fiercely loyal, resourceful in a crisis, utilizes her high EQ at all the right times, knows who to call 📞 (or how to figure it out), and is the kind of person who will be standing beside you while everyone else is still deciding whether they should get involved. If you're one of her people and you need help, the question isn't whether she's coming, it's, “What do you need, and what time are we meeting?” Which probably explains why her coworkers' suggestions for this next category had to be……edited for publication. 😆
🏆 Most Likely To: Be Your “One Phone Call”
So, the school picture tracks. The dog ears. The bows. The purple-on-purple-on-purple. Apparently the curiosity, big personality, and commitment to doing things her own way were all there from the beginning. Twenty years in, she’s still learning, still teaching, still dreaming up what might be possible - and still very unlikely to blend into the background. 💜
