BBI’s founding principals, Phil Bailey and Mark Roos, met in grammar school in San Francisco and have been friends ever since.
They were the kids who knew how to thread the film projector and make the microphones work. In college (Berkeley and Yale) both were heavily involved in theater as lighting designers and stage electricians. They completed degrees in electrical engineering and physics, respectively, both of which have come in handy over the years.
After college in the 1980’s, Phil designed theatrical dimmers, developing one of the first fully digitally controlled dimmers along with a communications protocol that was part of the technical foundation of the DMX protocol, still used today. Mark finished off a PhD in acoustics and signal processing and joined a research team at Berkeley developing the now common but then brand new medical MRI technology.
In 1984 they started BBI and within a few years its success demanded their full time attention. They added Sarah Roos and Sam Wong in the early 1990’s, and over 20 full time employees and additional regional crews hired based on project needs.
In 2019, ownership turned over to the next generation of Jim Sallee, Sasha Harris-Cronin, and Emily Roos, though Phil, Mark, Sam, and Sarah are also still principals. BBI is now officially a Women Business Enterprise in addition to being a Small Business Enterprise, and we are excited and honored to continue doing the work that we love.