BAYER: BERKELEY

Our Client: Bayer is a global enterprise with core competencies in the fields of health care and agriculture. Founded in 1863 and headquartered in Leverkusen, Germany, Bayer operates in over 83 countries and employs approximately 100,000 people worldwide.

Our Challenge: JCI has worked with Bayer USA to create and garner community support for Bayer’s campus expansion plans in Berkeley, CA and renew a 30-year development agreement with the City of Berkeley. There were concerns from the community, including logistical problems such as traffic, worries about pollution or hazardous waste from biomanufacturing, and ethical concerns about the work and research itself. JCI was tasked with shifting the narrative and focusing on the benefits of the expansion that the new Cell Culture Technology Center would bring.

Our Approach: The JCI team recruited a diverse and independent set of influential stakeholders who were then tasked with communicating to the City of Berkeley officials through letters and virtual testimony at critically important city department key hearings. The stakeholders shared their compelling perspectives on the topics of biomedical research, regenerative medicine, cell and gene therapy, biotechnology, bioethics, economic development, as well as patient and community benefits.

Our Results: Two key administrative hurdles were cleared with flying colors thanks to JCI’s efforts. Our recruited stakeholders were enormously influential, and completely muted and exposed opposition as groundless, underscoring their positions as uninformed outliers and not representative of the community as a whole.