Advanced Captioning

Thomas has been a court reporter since 1978 and a captioner since 1989. At the national level, Thomas served for six years on the NCRA Realtime Certification Committee, which developed the Certified CART Provider (CCP) and Certified Broadcast Captioner (CBC) certifications. She was also part of the team that developed the Certified Realtime Captioner (CRC) certification. She also served as a member of the NCRA Captioning Regulation and Captioning Committees. Since 2008, she has been a member of NCRA’s Council of the Academy of Professional Reporters (CAPR), which deals with certification and education issues. Thomas has served for many years on the faculty/training staff of NCRA.

Cathy L. Penniston is a freelance court reporter and captioner from Ottumwa, Iowa. Penniston spent 30 years working as an official court reporter for the state of Iowa before receiving a realtime captioning training grant and transitioning into a remote television broadcast captioning career. She has also worked as a freelance court reporter and a CART provider. Penniston currently teaches reporting classes at the Des Moines Area Community College, in Des Moines, Iowa. She also works as an independent broadcast captioner. In addition, she provides remote realtime of court proceedings in Arizona, Colorado, and Idaho.