Profiles
JUDITH H. BRENTANO, RPR, FAPR
President
Judy
coordinated and presented many realtime seminars for the
benefit of court reporters using realtime translation in
court and for those providing closed captioning for TV
broadcasts. She chaired many realtime-related task forces
and committees as well as participated in the development of
the NCRA realtime certification programs.
In other activities on behalf of the National Court
Reporters Association, she served on the Board of Directors
for 12 years, and was President from 1992-93. She is a
Fellow of the Academy of Professional Reporters. In 2004,
she received the association’s highest honor, the
Distinguished Service Award. She retired from the
organization in 2007.
Among her many professional experiences, in 1987Judy
developed and coordinated the first TV closed-captioning
project in the Southeast for WXIA-TV in Atlanta which
captioned prime news programs starting in 1988. Over the
next 20 years, she participated in large national
conferences for Gallaudet University, AARP, SHHH, various
associations of the Bench and Bar, and many educational
institutions.
Her company developed the Caption Masters Series comprised
of multimedia training materials for CART/captioners, the
Caption Masters Series Retraining workshops, and the Caption
Masters Series Retraining Manual© In addition, she developed
a Faculty Retraining Program, training manual, and
administered the program for the National Court Reporters
Association from 2001-2003.
Her writings and publications include hundreds of articles
related to realtime reporting and closed captioning which
were featured in various professional magazines as well as
the National Law Journal.
She now devotes her volunteer time to a large citizens-based
organization in FL which was formed in 2004 after Hurricane
Charley hit her family’s community.
HEIDI C. THOMAS, RPR, RMR, CRR
Director of Operations, Special Projects
Heidi
C. Thomas, RPR, RMR, CRR, has been a court reporter for 25
years, and a CART provider/captioner for 14 years. A former
Director and past Secretary of GSRA, and former member of
the Board of Court Reporting for the State of Georgia, she
has served on the faculty/training staff and the Realtime
Certification Committee of the National Court Reporters
Association, and presently serves on the CRR Certification
Standards Task Force. She has been a presenter at the
Georgia, Tennessee, Virginia, and Oklahoma court reporters
association conventions, and has been involved in realtime
training with The Caption Company, a broadcast captioning
company.
She worked as a national broadcast captioner with VITAC
Corp., and has also performed CART in the classroom, as well
as on-site captioning and CART for local, regional, national
and international conferences, conventions, and seminars.
Her broadcast captioning experience includes ABC, NBC, CBS,
ESPN, Fox Sports Net, and WAGA and WSB locally, and she was
also part of the captioning team for the 2000 Summer
Olympics on MSNBC.
She was part of the captioning teams who provided realtime
captioning for the AARP National Conventions in 1990, 1992,
1994, and 1996. She also captioned the American Postal
Workers Union National Biennial Convention in 1996, 1998,
2000, and 2002. She was also part of a team of CART
providers who provided services at the Disabled Peoples'
International 6th World Assembly in Sapporo, Japan, in 2002.
She is one of a team of trainers for the University of
Mississippi's Caption Masters Series for retraining of
Certified Realtime Reporters into CART and captioning, and
is currently Special Projects Director for EduCaption in
Atlanta, Georgia.
MICHAEL R. BRENTANO, RPR, FAPR
Vice President
Mike
Brentano is a graduate of Emory University with a Bachelor
of Arts Degree. He began his reporting career in 1980 and
was most notably the Official Court Reporter to the
Honorable Judge Harold L. Murphy, U. S. District Judge for
the Northern District of Georgia, Atlanta and Rome
Divisions. His reporting experience includes covering
high-tech computer cases in the States and Europe.
He served on the Board of Directors and was elected to the
Presidency of the National Court Reporters Association. He
chaired the Test Advisory Committee which developed national
certification testing for court reporters. He holds the
Registered Professional Reporter designation and is a
Certified Court Reporter in Georgia, and holds two sections
of the Certificate of Merit. He is a Fellow of the Academy
of Professional Reporters of the National Court Reporters
Association.
He has conducted numerous seminars on technology for both
the Bench and Bar, as well as sessions on computer
management and realtime reporting. He has provided CART
services for many deaf and hard-of-hearing groups in
Georgia, as well as for students in college classes. He has
been published in the Journal of Court Reporting and The
National Law Journal.
