Meet Charlotte leader who doesn’t want adults forced to move back to childhood rooms
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Kimberly Owens is the new Charlotte City Councilwoman representing District 6.
- Owens is a longtime corporate attorney from a working class family.
- She wants to make Charlotte more affordable for younger generations.
Kimberly Owens felt like a fish out of water when she landed in Charlotte some 30 years ago.
It was a big city — certainly bigger than the Midwest town where she grew up — and many of her colleagues were just the latest in a long line of attorneys.
There she was beside them, a first-generation college graduate and the daughter of a steelworker who didn’t know any lawyers before becoming one. Her background added extra weight to her work, and the feeling she’s an “only,” she said.
“Most often, I’m the only woman. But I’m also the person who wants to talk about, you know, why don’t we have any Black folks at the table, and where’s our LGBTQ representation,” Owens said. “I’ve always had to sort of carry that into conversations.”
She once had dreams of being a district attorney or a prosecutor against “the worst of the worst,” but the reality was those jobs don’t pay well, she said. Her $175,000 education debt directed her instead toward corporate law.
“She always felt like she could do more and that she was kind of sacrificing her abilities in providing for a corporation that didn’t really have the necessary benefit that she would’ve liked to see put out into the world,” said Hayden Owens, one of her three sons. “It was just her time to give back.”
Kimberly Owens became one of City Council’s newest elected officials last week after winning an upset election in south Charlotte’s District 6. There’s a sense of freedom that comes with the new role.
She can afford to scale back her career and devote more energy to systemic change making, and City Council is by far the most diverse board she’s ever been a part of, with women outnumbering men seven to four and people of color holding all but two seats.
While Owens said she won’t put down her advocacy mantle, she will focus more on listening and less on being the “only.”
“I can just be me,” Owens said. “And that’s exciting.”
Who is Kimberly Owens?
Owens is meticulous and methodical in everything she does, her younger sister, Karrah Sipes Martin, said. Not a detail goes unnoticed.
That comes in handy on matters of legal import for her family, including wills or insurances. When a grandparent dies, Owens steps up to get their estate in order.
But her keen eye for detail also shines in festive settings.
Her house is a sight to behold every Christmas. Owens puts painstaking thought into every nook and cranny and changes things up each year, Martin said.
“She is an absolute overdoer. Overachiever, overdoer, and knows it.”
Owens transferred to Northwestern University in undergrad because the university near her small town Illinois home “academically could not keep up with her,” Martin said.
She interned with the consulate general of Canada as a student and became the first person in her family to obtain a bachelor’s degree before moving to North Carolina to attend UNC Chapel Hill for law school.
“Her legal mind is one of her best qualities as a public servant,” Hayden Owens said.
Path to politics
Kimberly Owens grew up in a working-class family where political discourse abounded, even if politics itself didn’t feel accessible.
Their father, a Rush Limbaugh-listening Vietnam veteran, sent Martin into wealthy neighborhoods to snatch political signs from front yards, unaware they were free to those who wanted them. That’s how her family wound up sporting both Bush and Dukakis signs one election.
“Getting involved in politics was a rich people’s game,” Martin said. “We didn’t know any better.”
Their relatives ran the partisan gamut, perhaps best illustrated by their grandparents on their mom’s side of the family. Both were judges for the same precinct but spent election days sitting at opposite tables: Grandpa was a Democrat, grandma a Republican.
Owens did her best to beat back focus on partisan politics during her campaign, downplaying its importance in the work she hoped to accomplish if elected. It was a tall task considering her opponent, Krista Bokhari, framed the election as a consequential moment for Charlotte Republicans in which they stood to lose their voice on council.
“For me, that doesn’t serve Charlotte well,” Owens said. “I don’t view Charlotte as a Democratic city. Charlotte is just a city. It’s a city that has a number of well-intentioned people who are trying to do the next right thing.”
Districts 6 and 7 in south Charlotte have the highest concentration of Republican voters in the city and were the last two remaining Republican holdouts on a majority Democratic council. Owens is the first person to flip a district seat in more than 25 years.
It’s a trivial fact for Owens, and one she won’t linger on. Her first speech from the dais the night she took office echoed her message all along the campaign trail.
“To District 6 Republicans: You have not lost your voice. I offer you a seat at the table for real collaboration, and just trust me when I say that I likely will disappoint Democrats, Republicans and Independents alike,” Owens said in her speech. “Not because I don’t believe in the promises and protections of a liberal democracy but because municipal government doesn’t address many of the things that feel so broken in our country right now.”
Accessible communicator
Owens is a gifted orator and a “long-starving author of creative writing,” Martin said. She pulls inspiration from the unlikeliest of places.
One of Owens’ simple pleasures is reading southern obituaries, which are much more elaborate than the clinical memorials published in her hometown that stick to dates and relatives. Whenever she loses a loved one, Owens takes it upon herself to whip up a “giant literary masterpiece” chronicling their life, according to her sister.
“This is a little nugget of the South that she has brought to central Illinois,” Martin said. “All these other poor grandparents in the central Illinois newspaper get these little $75 squares, and our grandparents get $800 multi-column tales from my sister.”
Her communication skills were a draw for Anna Carpenter, a political strategist who would become Owens’ campaign manager.
Carpenter considers four main qualities when evaluating candidates. Are they strong communicators? Can they fundraise? Are they willing to do the work? Is their platform appealing to voters?
“She checked all the boxes three times over,” Carpenter said.
Serving the younger generation
Owens’ family was concerned by her decision to run. Shortly before she filed for election, a Minnesota legislator was assassinated and another one shot. Shortly after, a Virginia city councilman was set on fire.
Political violence was front and center in her husband, Martin Faines’ mind.
“I had to hold space for that but also appreciate that I wasn’t willing to let that dissuade me,” Owens said.
Carpenter recalled asking Owens why she wanted to run for office the first time they met. Owens said her sons want to continue living in their home city but can only afford their high school bedrooms because costs are too high. She wants to use her power on council to change that.
“As someone who also is currently talking to you from her high school bedroom, that really resonated with me,” said Carpenter, 22. “She really wants to lift up the younger generation, the younger voices, and make sure that we have a path going forward.”
This story was originally published December 10, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
