Twin Court Reporters Turned Successful Business Owners: Alumni Whitney Kumar’s and Kamryn Villegas’s Entrepreneurship Story started at Mt. SAC
From growing up in Chino Hills to attending Mt. SAC to starting their wildly successful court reporting business, identical twin sisters Whitney Kumar and Kamryn Villegas are typical Mountie alumnae, which of course means they are anything but typical. Did Kamryn and Whitney make the decision to attend Mt. SAC together? It depends on which one you ask. One thing is for sure, though: being Mounties was inevitable. Both women played high school sports and were lured by Mt. SAC’s top-tier athletics program.
Since they had grown up so close to Mt. SAC, Whitney and Kamryn always knew the College had a great reputation, and that it would be a logical next step for them after high school. Both women focused on general education classes at Mt. SAC since neither knew what career path they wanted to pursue. Mt. SAC turned out to be an ideal place to explore their different options. Whitney was recruited by the women’s golf coach, and she finally got the opportunity to play on a women’s team after having to play on the boys team in high school. Kamyrn ran track and cross country for Mt. SAC. Both women found lifelong friends and made countless happy memories while at Mt. SAC.
While at Mt. SAC, Whitney took a computer class and fell in love with the process of typing. She declared that she wanted to find a job where she could work on a computer all day, preferably typing. A classmate joked that she should become a court reporter, but Whitney took the suggestion seriously. She did some research about the job and then asked her uncle, a district attorney in Los Angeles, for advice. With her uncle’s encouragement, she enrolled in court reporting school at South Coast College and found her passion. She soon convinced her sister to join her there.
Court reporting school is a tough path, and the dropout rate is high. Kamryn and Whitney were adequately prepared for the rigors of court reporting school because of their experiences as athletes: practice is the key to succeeding in court reporting school, just like in sports. The process of learning to be a court reporter is like learning a new language. Court reporters type phonetically and learn to listen for sounds rather than words. It usually takes a student three to five years to complete court reporting school. (It only took Whitney two.) In order to be a court reporter in the state of California, an individual must pass a test and be able to type 200 words per minute with 98 percent accuracy. Court reporters are in high demand, and the sisters had their pick of jobs. Kamryn worked freelance on depositions while Whitney went to work for a family court judge in LA County. She was the court reporter for high profile cases like Britney Spears trying to get custody of her children.
After several years, budget cuts forced the County to lay off all the civil court reporters, and Whitney found herself doing freelance work like Kamryn. Starting their own firm seemed like the best next move for their careers. Their freelance history meant that they had a handful of lawyers who would become their client base, and they began searching for more. Luckily, they were scrappy and had great reputations within the law community. In the early days of KW Court Reporting, Whitney and Kamryn would meet their parents in a parking lot, hand over their children, and head inside an office building, armed with cookies their mom had made, to solicit new business. KW Court Reporting grew quickly, and now eight years later, they have eight employees and 200 freelance court reporters and work with over 300 law firms. The business is so successful that Kamryn and Whitney don’t usually perform regular court reporting duties anymore. That frees them up to work on new business, maintain client relationships, and pursue fun projects. One such project is Judy Justice, a new Judge Judy reality show featuring Whitney as the court reporter.
Both Whitney and Kamryn are grateful to have attended Mt. SAC. The College’s atmosphere created a low-stress environment for them to determine the paths they’d take afterwards, and the quality education they received there facilitated a smooth transition to court reporting school. Kamryn recalls her time as a Mountie as “a very happy time in my life” that “shaped who I am.” Whitney is relieved she didn’t choose a four-year university where she would have been stuck with a career path before she was really ready to pick one. “I’m doing something I want to do rather than something I was forced to do,” she says. Once again, Mt. SAC has paved a golden path for its alumni.