What We’re Up To
We sat down for a coffee with Cities SVP Sam Biederman, who leads BerlinRosen’s higher education, cities & culture practice. We talked all about his higher ed work at BerlinRosen, the future of the industry and the benefits that institutions stand to gain from working with a PR firm.
How do you like your coffee?
Black.
Tell me about what you do at BerlinRosen.
I work with clients across higher education, as well as arts and culture, to advance their very best and most interesting stories and make sure they get in front of audiences who can have the most impact.
So that means everything from talking to students to figure out what excites them about the work they’re doing in the classroom, to researchers who are in the field or lab coming up with amazing, new discoveries, cures and innovations, as well as people leading the universities—deans, provosts and presidents—to discover and describe their visions for their institutions.
The core of what I do is try to ask the right questions of all those groups to tease out what the essence of each institution really is. There are hundreds of universities and colleges across the United States. Each one has a unique reason to exist—something that makes it special, makes it significant. But those within each college and university are often so close to the topic that those differentiators become invisible. I’ve been one of those people myself! So my job is to help each of these institutions rediscover themselves and figure out what makes them absolutely indispensable—to themselves, to their immediate communities, to the regions they serve and to the world.
Why did you join BerlinRosen?
I knew from years of working in higher ed, arts, culture and in government that BerlinRosen is absolutely the best, smartest, most progressive and most exciting agency in New York City. Not to put too fine a point on it.
How can universities and colleges benefit from a specialized PR partner?
The university is a complicated animal, right? There’s thousands of stakeholders—from students, to donors, to community members, to faculty, to staff, to leadership and more—and the job of figuring out what the narrative is and then telling it in a way that moves the needle isn’t something you can do effectively on your own.
Because the audiences are so large and so different, and yet so very close to the institution itself, I find that it’s really necessary for universities and colleges to retain experts outside the institution so they get guidance that’s informed by an outside perspective, but at the same time, can serve as a powerful advocate and storyteller. Like I said earlier, one of the difficult things about doing university comms is that you’re really close to it. And having a partner who knows the industry, who knows your stakeholders and who knows what’s at stake adds some jet fuel to the operation in a way that cannot be replicated.
How do you see the future of higher ed communications?
It’s complicated. We used to say that the media and tech were the fastest moving industries in the economy. Higher ed is catching up.
It’s changing really quickly because it has to. The size of the college-aged cohort is stabilized and shrinking. The price of schooling is really expensive now, especially compared to historical numbers. And even the very value of a college degree—let alone a grad degree—is coming under question.
While population and cost are a big part of the challenge, tech is the real earthquake. It’s just easier to get information now. That doesn’t mean it’s easy to get good information or get good instruction, but it’s available in a way that it didn’t used to be available. And of course AI challenges traditional pedagogical approaches, the notion of a traditional career path and what the very experience of a student could be. It’s incumbent on the colleges and the universities to not just respond to that, but to anticipate what that might be.
So every college, no matter what they’re teaching, is figuring out how to face it. Some are jumping into the change and completely transforming the way that they teach. And some are saying “no, stop, we’re going to do things exactly as we’ve been doing them for 150 years.”
Neither is a bad idea, necessarily, as long the schools are remaining true to their mission and their students. We need both approaches—and both of those stories have to be told.
What has been some of your proudest work at BerlinRosen?
I had a great time working with Dartmouth College on the announcement of one of the most significant pieces of tech transfer, really in this century. We landed a story on this in The New York Times.
The spike protein of the COVID molecule was discovered at Dartmouth, and that discovery made the vaccines possible. It was exciting to tell that story—how this tiny discovery went all around the world and then came back to campus to Dartmouth in the form of funding generated by the IP. Dartmouth now has tens of millions of dollars of new research funding that will in turn produce more great discoveries like this.
Students and faculty around the world make these discoveries every day. Developing these stories, reminding the public that there are actually people behind these advancements—that’s an exciting line of business to be in.
Tell me about a life-changing moment that helped shape who you are today.
When I was in sixth grade, my house burned and we lost everything that we owned. Thank God none of us were hurt, but it was a really good lesson in impermanence: how quickly you can lose something and how long it can take to recover it.
It doesn’t mean you have to be on your toes—you would think that it would mean that—but really it means that you can relax knowing it’s all gonna go away. You’re resilient, and you’ll be fine.
Fast Facts
Last TV show you binge-watched: Veep
Restaurant you’d recommend to close friends: Leroy’s in Greenpoint
A concert that you’d love to experience: Aretha Franklin
Best album ever: Exile on Main St.
Your dream dinner guest: Frank O’Hara
A book that changed you: Chimera by John Barth
A movie you’d pay to see again and again: My Beautiful Laundrette
Advice you’d tell your younger self: Work in local government as early as possible, right out of college. You learn everything.