Press: In the News

A local program that teaches young girls about drone technology has gone global.

Dealing with the challenges of today requires problem-solvers who bring different perspectives and are willing to take risks, according to Our Genetic Legacy CEO Shellie Baxter. Ashley find out how the young women involved in the program are using drones to unlock history and prepare for a better tomorrow.

Our genetic legacy is mentoring young BIPOC women on how to use technology to connect to their Black culture.

In 2018, after spending 20 years raising her daughters as a stay-at-home mom, Shellie Baxter created Our Genetic Legacy (OGL), a nonprofit educational publishing house focusing on amplifying the voices and stories of people of color. Shellie used our TechHire program to provide paid work experiences for young female data analysts and drone pilots. Below, Shellie tells us how she turned her passion for story telling into a trailblazing organization.

Meet the young women using state-of-the-art aerial technology in an effort to document San Diego’s Forgotten BIPOC History

On February 17, 2023 , Our Genetic Legacy took a trip to Julian, CA to learn about the history of the Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) pioneers of the county. Our Genetic Legacy is a non-profit organization led by the founder and CEO. Her organization has a program for young women, who she has coined as “Herstorians.”

Shellie Frances Baxter is a Social Impact Scientist. She is the founding CEO of Our Genetic Legacy. Through her organization, she captures and shares the personal and familial stories of BIPOC legacies to create a more robust and accurate historical record to educate generations to come. She is leading the charge to change the way history is taught.

The non-profit, Our Genetic Legacy, teaches young girls of ethnic minorities how to use drones to discover the history of people of color.

We interviewed Shellie Baxter, the founder of Our Genetic Legacy, and discussed the use of LiDAR technology by SPH Engineering to uncover and share the history of underrepresented communities. Her year-long program for girls focuses on recovering the history of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) communities.

Drones are being used for more than just jobsite capture. Organizations like Our Genetic Legacy are also using them to empower BIPOC female innovators in preserving their collective history.

Meet Shellie Baxter, Founding CEO Our Genetic Legacy and learn about what inspired her to pursue a STEM career, her STEM pathway and current work, and advice for young women and girls to pursue their passions.

This conversation features Shellie Baxter, founder of Our Genetic Legacy, a non-profit that creates projects that expose and publish lost family legacies of BIPOC Americans in order to diversify, correct and expand the
current history of America to include all Americans.

Our Genetic Legacy will participate in the 13th Annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Community Celebration celebrating the civil rights leader at his namesake park in the heart of Southeastern San Diego.

A San Diego nonprofit, which trains teenage girls of color to use drones to discover their heritage, has taken the program to Africa.

They call themselves hers-torians and they are on a mission.

A local organization is helping empower young girls to learn about technology.

A social impact scientist and entrepreneur, San Diego’s Shellie Baxter was tired of the systemic erasure of BIPOC American legacies and contributions from U.S. history—so she decided to correct the narrative herself. In 2018, Shellie founded Our Genetic Legacy (OGL), a San Diego-based nonprofit with the mission of telling the previously-excluded stories of BIPOC Americans using genomics and tech.

Baxter's legacy will be one of diversity and making the world a better place for future generations, including for her own two daughters

In honor of Women’s History Month, students, educators and supporters gathered Wednesday at the Elementary Institute of Science in San Diego for a drone demonstration to show how the nonprofit Our Genetic Legacy’s DRONE (Descendents Recovering Our Names) Project will teach young women to use lidar (light detection and ranging) to create 3D images of landscapes invisible to the naked eye.

A couple dozen teen girls are flying high after learning how to fly drones with laser detection while on their Spring break studying to be FAA certified drone pilots.