Ariana Jordan Bio

Ariana is originally from Santa Monica, California, where she attended high school at SAMOHI. Even though she was granted full scholarships to the University of Santa Cruz, the University of Santa Barbara, and Humboldt, Ariana made the decision to move to St. Louis, Missouri, to be closer to her family and strive for a degree in the “University of Life”.

After discovering the stenographic field in 2003, Ariana knew that becoming a stenographer was the niche for her. She quickly enrolled in the Information Reporting Technology program at St. Louis Community College – Meramec. She knew from the beginning that she wanted to caption for television and work with the deaf and hard-of-hearing as a CART Provider, essentially becoming their “ears”. Her studies veered away from the judicial field and became focused primarily on CART and captioning.

During her time in college, she was taught and became proficient with Eclipse captioning software. Ariana was selected to be CART Provider for the college a year prior to graduation, thus embarking on her career as a CART Provider in 2005. Simultaneously, she was scouted and recruited by a major U.S. captioning company. She went on to complete the program, graduating in May 2007 with Academic Honors. She earned a Certificate of Proficiency in Information Reporting Technology, specializing in CART and captioning.

During the summer of 2007, Ariana worked closely with the recruiter from the captioning company who had scouted her during her last year in college. She had been captioning news files and building her real-time dictionary in Eclipse, the CAT software she trained with in college. By September of 2007, she was ready to go live “On-Air” and became a full-time real-time broadcast captioner.

Ariana has captioned news for stations such as KSDK Channel 5 in St. Louis, KUSI Channel 9 in San Diego, WCSH Channel 6 in Portland, and WCCO Channel 4 in Minnesota. She has also captioned live programming such as ShopNBC, Sports Talk, In the Huddle, and Coffee with the Fords. Ariana has captioned hundreds of hours of live sports including baseball, football, hockey, basketball, and lacrosse, as well as programming on MTV, VH1, CMT, ESPN, NHL, MLB, and The SPEED Channel.

Ariana began working in the fall of 2007 providing part-time on-site CART for universities such as Southern Illinois University Edwardsville and St. Louis University. In the fall of 2009, she began working full-time at Washington University in St. Louis as an on-site CART Provider with a student in the graduate architectural program.

The following summer, Ariana stepped into a new chapter and became an in-stadium captioner. She taught herself how to use Case Catalyst CAT software so she could send her captions directly to LED boards and scoreboards inside stadiums. During the 2010–2011 MLB season, she captioned the Mets home games at Shea Stadium. The next season she began captioning home games for the St. Louis Cardinals at Busch Stadium and the Miami Marlins at LoanDepot Park. She also filled in for the New York Yankees at Yankee Stadium and the Philadelphia Phillies at Citizens Bank Park.

In the fall of 2010, Ariana took another big step and launched Realtime Ready Captions, LLC. She built the company around the accessibility-centered approach she had always believed in, delivering real-time closed captioning through skilled and certified human stenographers like herself who work as independent contractors for RRC and are located across the country.

Over the years her client list for CART and captioning has grown to include Washington University in St. Louis, the University of California Berkeley, the University of California Santa Cruz, Sonoma State University, Silicon Valley College in California, the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, NASA, CAEAFTA, SANDAG, and the John Fetterman for Senator campaign. On the broadcast side, her clients have included KUSI Channel 9 in San Diego, Covered California, North Carolina State University, the City of Springfield in Illinois, Kaufman Broadcasting, and Spot Studio in St. Louis.

In-stadium and live sports captioning became a natural specialty for Realtime Ready Captions because of Ariana’s deep technical knowledge with Evertz captioning encoders, iCap, and Daktronics scoreboards. In 2019, the company added the St. Louis Cardinals at Busch Stadium, St. Louis Blues at Enterprise Center, and St. Louis Battlehawks at The Dome at America's Center as exclusive clients on her roster.

In 2024, Ariana expanded once again, this time into legal settings. She began providing CART services for hearing-impaired litigants, defendants, and jury members in courts across Missouri, including St. Louis County, St. Charles County, Callaway County, and Boone County. As demand for real-time court reporters continues to grow, she started the testing process with the National Court Reporters Association to earn her Registered Professional Reporter (RPR) certification.