Minden woman new president of national court reporters

Karen Yates of Minden is the new president of the National Court Reporters Association, a 23,000-member association representing official court reporters and providers of captioning and realtime transcription services for the legal, broadcasting, business, government and educational communities throughout the United States.

A member of the association since 1978, Yates has also served as a director, vice president, president-elect and president of the Nevada Court Reporters Association.

She has been an adjunct faculty member of the National Judicial College in Reno since 1995, lecturing and giving demonstrations of communication access realtime translation, a service that provides immediate, written translation of spoken words and environmental sounds for people who are deaf or hard of hearing, enabling them to take part in academic, cultural and civic events.

"Through my daily work, I see first-hand the needs of the deaf and hard-of-hearing community and the difficulties that some in the community have in fully accessing communication," Yates said. "Having the opportunity to give back to the men and women in America who are hard-of-hearing has been one of my most rewarding achievements."

She holds national certifications as a CART provider, a registered professional reporter, certified realtime reporter, and certified broadcast captioner, and she is the liaison to the CART community of interest for the national board of directors.

"Karen Yates played a critical role in introducing CART to the Nevada university system, where it is now used on several campuses," said Mark Golden, executive director of NCRA. "Further, she led the effort to gain passage of the nation's first mandatory CART certification in the country and was named NCRA's Legislative Activist of the Year in 2005."

Yates was a member of a Blue Ribbon Commission on Voice Technology and was vice chair of the National Committee of State Association in 2003. She has authored several articles for the Journal of Court Reporting and the Nevada association's newsletter and has presented seminars on a variety of topics related to court reporting.

She has worked as a freelance reporter in New Jersey, Colorado, Nevada and California.

In addition to her national credentials, she holds state certifications in Nevada and California.