[2][3][4] Born Barbara Ann Nusser,[5] Battista earned a bachelor's degree in radio, television, and film production at Northwestern University in 1974.
During that time, she also reported on historic events including the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, the Gulf War, the US Air Flight 427 crash[10] and the September 11 attacks.
[citation needed] In 1998, Battista was named as the host of the first multi-platform interactive talk show, TalkBack Live, which ran for an hour on weekday afternoons.
She joined her husband John Brimelow's firm, Atamira Communications, and provided strategic counsel to a wide range of Fortune 500 companies.
[2] Battista, who lived in Atlanta, Georgia, was also in the process of starting a new video production company focusing on reality television programming.