experience. The following year he transferred to UC Riverside, which offered a more wheelchair-accessible campus, and majored in both economics and sociology. After receiving a BS at Riverside, Batavia attended Harvard Law School for two years. The following summer, he interned as an associate at the Wall Street firm Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson. After two years at Harvard, he took a leave to get an MS degree in health services research at Stanford Medical School (1980-1983), where he studied under Victor Fuchs and Alain Enthoven. While at Stanford, he joined and served as president of the Stanford Disabled Students to address disability policy issues at the campus. Batavia then completed his final year of law school at Stanford (1983-1984) while still receiving his law degree (JD) from Harvard in 1984. Initial career Batavia's first job after law school was in the office of the general counsel at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), where he promulgated regulations, reviewed proposals, and litigated. After two years working for HHS, he left and joined the National Rehabilitation Hospital (now Medstar) as associate director of health services research under Gerben Dejong in Washington, D.C. (1987-1989). In 1986–87, he was funded as a Mary E. Switzer Research Fellow and started his career as a health policy researcher, publishing, together with Gerben, in the area of rehabilitation. White House Fellowship Batavia was one of twelve White House Fellows selected for the 1990–91 period. He served as special assistant to Attorney General Richard Thornburgh, writing regulations to effectuate the implementation of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990. Government and policy work Following the WHF, Batavia accepted a position as senior staffer on the Domestic Policy Council in the White House (1991-1992), under President George H. W. Bush, where he wrote a proposal for national universal health care. In 1992, he served a year as research director for disability and rehabilitation policy at ABT Associates, Inc., in Bethesda, Maryland (1992-1993) and later, he served as executive director at the National Council on Disability (1993). From 1993-95, Batavia served as a legislative assistant to Senator John McCain of Arizona, where he focused on domestic economic and health policy issues. Miami Herald columnist In 1992, Batavia and his longtime personal assistant, Cheryl Nicholson, were married at their home in Washington, D.C. In 1995, they moved to Miami Beach, where Batavia wrote a column about