Mr. Bhatia is an attorney, advocate and expert on fiscal matters and public policy with over 25 years of experience championing government / democracy reforms and public and private coalitions to achieve fiscally responsible policy targets, economic development, quality education and renewable energy goals. He is currently a John L. Weinberg/Goldman Sachs & Co. Visiting Professor and visiting lecturer in public and international affairs at Princeton University. He also Chairs the Board of Hispanic Information and Telecommunications Network, Inc. (HITN), the largest hispanic not-for-profit television station in the United States.
Bhatia earned his A.B. from Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs in 1986. He earned a J.D. from Stanford Law School in 1990.
From 1990 to 1991, he served as a law clerk at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Boston. From 1991 to 1992, he was the chief of staff for the resident commissioner of Puerto Rico in the U.S. Congress. Bhatia practiced law in San Juan from 1993 to 1995 before being elected senator-at-large in Puerto Rico in 1996. In 2006, the governor appointed him executive director of the Puerto Rico Federal Affairs Administration. In 2008, Bhatia was again elected for a four-year term and in 2012 became the 15th president of the Senate of Puerto Rico. During this time in the Puerto Rico Senate, he focused on the island’s fiscal system and authored a comprehensive energy reform law. He also wrote legislation directed at improving the public education system as well as civil rights and the environment. In 2013, Bhatia served as co-chair of the Eastern Regional Conference of the Council of State Governments in the United States. Also that year, he was elected president of the National Hispanic Caucus of State Legislators.