Drone Girl is the web, drone-flying persona of Sally French, a southern California native and recent graduate of the University of Missouri where she received a BA in German and a BJ in Photojournalism.

Sally first got interested drones when she served as a photographer and producer at the Missouri School of Journalism’s drone journalism program in its inaugural year.The first “drone journalism” she did was  produce a video for Harvest Public Media in which footage from a drone documents a prairie fire.

That wasn’t her first experience using atypical forms of photography. During the summer of 2012, she was thrilled to join the NBC4 Los Angeles’ Investigative Team, where she did lots of undercover reporting with hidden cameras to crack down on doctors giving away illegal medical marijuana prescriptions or a housing rental company that was cheating customers.

Her work has been published in major news outlets including NPR, CNN, The BBC, Forbes, The Economist, the San Francisco Chronicle and  the Orange County Register. She has also extensively studied drones and journalism through past work experiences as a data analyst at Investigative Reporters and Editors and as an aerial video producer at 3D Robotics, which manufactures consumer-level drones.