Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Focus Areas

To support our comprehensive DEI efforts at BioMarin, we are actively pursuing three special areas of focus through 2025. Read below to learn more about each of our focus areas.

Increase Female Representation Among Top Leaders

At BioMarin, diversity is critical to what we do: We need the widest range of perspectives and ideas to address complex challenges in science and medicine. These broad contributions can only come from a highly diverse employee community, which brings the knowledge and insights gained from life experiences across the spectrum. An equal number of women and men is one among many of the critical characteristics that define this community.

Equal Female/Male Representation at Nearly Every Level

At nearly all levels of our company – including senior managers, directors, and executive directors – our global employee population reflects an equal number of women and men. Among top leadership, our average percentage of women has continued to increase, and we are actively working to extend this upward trajectory.

Our commitment to equal representation among women and men is evident in our employee demographics: women represent nearly half or more of global BioMarin employees from individual contributors to executive directors, and 40% of our top leaders, including vice presidents and above, are women.

Strategies: Increasing Representation of Women in the Most Senior Roles

We are committed to achieving equal executive representation among women and men in the future. To achieve this goal, we are adopting several strategies including:

  • Ensuring significant representation of women in candidate pools for leadership positions across the organization
  • Requiring interview teams to include women representation, prioritizing feedback from diverse perspectives through the interview process as selections are made
  • Providing professional development and coaching opportunities to promote women and other underrepresented groups from within, such as a mentor program that partners talented individuals with development partners

Increase People of Color Representation in U.S.

Continuing to support people of color will remain among our highest priorities for the BioMarin community. When people from all walks of life come together to solve a difficult biomedical challenge, the result has exponentially more impact than a single perspective alone. For this reason, diversity is essential to our mission at BioMarin. We must ensure that our workforce reflects a broad spectrum of views and ideas to address the highly complex conditions that affect people around the world.

People of Color: Half of U.S. Employees Through Senior Managers

Twenty-five years ago, BioMarin began by embracing difference, acknowledging and addressing the unmet medical needs of people with rare conditions. A deep commitment to valuing difference remains at the heart of our company, where we are constantly working to support, understand and celebrate people of color across our employee community. This work takes many forms – from a wide range of Employee Resource Groups representing people of color across the spectrum, to both Foundational and Advanced DEI Training for our global employees, to our with organizations that connect us with bright young underrepresented interns who will become the biomedical leaders of tomorrow.

While data protection rules do not allow people of color demographics to be collected in all of our global regions, available U.S. data show people of color currently represent half of U.S. BioMarin employees from individual contributors to senior managers, with people of color including Asian/Asian American, Hispanic/LatinX, Black/African American, Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, and American Indian/Alaskan Native people.

We have a great deal of progress yet to make in our DEI journey. Moving forward, we remain committed to supporting and advancing particularly underrepresented groups throughout BioMarin.

Strategies: Increasing People of Color Representation in U.S.

We have critical work to do toward our goal of increasing people of color representation in our U.S. workforce, and we are advancing this work at every opportunity. We are taking active steps to ensure more people of color are represented at higher leadership levels, to recruit more entry-level Black and LatinX employees, and to provide educational opportunities for the underrepresented youth who will become the next generation of biomedical leaders. These steps include:

  • Expanding efforts to achieve diversity in the candidate pool, including for associate director and above positions across business units
  • Supporting recruitment by increasing strategic attendance and partnerships at conferences, schools, and organizations for underrepresented groups
  • Increasing diversity in interview panels, and including DEI concepts and behaviors in training for interview panelists
  • Creating professional development programs to increase retention and leadership communities for our underrepresented diverse population, including a Mentor Program that partners talented individuals with development partners
  • Partnering with community organizations to provide internship opportunities for people of color in high school and college

BioMarin U.S. People of Color Employee Representation

U.S. data for people of color are shown below.

Maintain Full Pay Equity in U.S. and Increase to Fullest Extent Globally

To continue bringing their best, authentic selves to work each day, our employees must be confident that they are equitably valued and acknowledged by our company. Only then can our workforce feel empowered to contribute their best ideas toward solving complex biomedical challenges and developing life-changing therapies for the people we serve.

Full Pay Equity Among U.S. Employees

BioMarin is an industry leader in pay equity, championing fair and equitable compensation for our employees. We have a longstanding history of conducting consistent and comprehensive pay practice reviews at key stages in the employee experience, including at the time of hire and during annual merit and promotion cycles. Since 2018, all of our reviews have received rigorous external analysis in addition to our extensive internal validation processes, and we have continued to earmark funds in our annual budget to address identified discrepancies.

Our sustained focus has resulted in the highest pay equity standards for our employees. Since 2019, we have had equitable pay across total compensation between women and men in the U.S., and beginning in 2021, we achieved full pay equity for all of our U.S. employees. In addition, we apply our proven pay practices in our other global regions, striving to ensure that all BioMarin employees around the world are compensated fairly and equitably.

Strategies: Increasing Pay Equity to Fullest Extent Globally

We are increasing pay equity even more at BioMarin by utilizing all available data to ensure equity in each global region to the fullest extent possible. U.S. data rules allow us to collect demographics on the gender and ethnicity of our U.S. employees, which we have used to achieve full pay equity among all of these employees. Data rules in other BioMarin regions, including Europe, Latin America, and Asia Pacific, allow for the collection of employee demographics on gender and not ethnicity. We have made great strides toward achieving full pay equity across gender in our other BioMarin regions, and we are implementing several strategies and best practices to ultimately reach full pay equity regardless of gender:

  • Pay benchmarked regularly, using reputable salary survey information and market comparators representing biotech/pharma companies, with these analyses accounting for all compensation components including base salary, bonus, and equity awards
  • Internally equitable pay practices, such as job families/leveling and pay structures/grades, with regular analyses to identify outliers
  • Compensation programs tied to performance (e.g., bonus, equity), and department calibration meetings to review talent and performance