Big Bad Boo was founded with the objective of creating quality content that puts the “other” at the center of the conversation, promoting Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility (IDEA). We view IDEA with three distinct pillars in our 1) Teams – behind and in front of the camera 2) Company Culture and 3) Original Content.

We work with these elements in mind for all areas of our business. We hire cast and crew to adhere to these values and create authentic stories. Our company is led by Aly Jetha and Shabnam Rezaei, a gender-balanced BIPOC leadership team that lives this mantra and supports it in the company culture. In our Television series, short content, games, apps, and books we keep IDEA at the forefront of the stories.

We work with expert teams with lived experiences to match the content or provide reviews of Big Bad Boo’s content, including scripts, art, designs, story arcs, and other assets, to ensure we combat stereotypes, and celebrate different cultures to normalize the inclusion of minority groups, particularly those that may be disenfranchised, including LGBTQ+, BIPOC, female creatives and those with disabilities.

In an industry where over 70% of children’s programs feature white male character leads, Big Bad Boo has broken ground over the last 10 years. With eight award-winning television series that feature female or LGBTQ lead characters, and the first pre-school series with an openly LGBTQ family, we have won many awards that recognize our inclusive content, including the prestigious GLAAD Media Award, the Diversity in Media Award at MIPCOM – the world’s largest entertainment conference in Cannes, France –, and the Champions of Diversity Business Awards.

To pay it forward, Big Bad Boo has founded key initiatives to increase the voice and participation of women and minorities in an otherwise male-dominated industry. We launched and sponsored a series of workshops for BIPOC creatives including female, queer, and disabled, to build creative capacity for writing, animation, and storyboarding. The workshops continue to date and so far, twelve of the alumni have worked on Big Bad Boo Shows while six have been hired on other film and television projects in the industry. This program was so successful that it received the endorsement of the Canada Media Fund as well as CBC Kids. We continue to speak on panels at conferences and events on the topics of authenticity, inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility.