She is a professor of physics education research at the University of Colorado Boulder, executive director of the university's Learning Assistant Program, and co-director of its Center for STEM Learning.
[1] Otero grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the daughter of Hispanic grocers without a college education.
She earned a master's degree in geophysics from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) in 1995, and completed her Ph.D. in 2001 in physics education research jointly through UCSD and San Diego State University.
[2] She was named a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2021, after a nomination from the APS Forum on Education, "for the creation and broad dissemination of innovative physics curricular materials, pioneering contributions to physics teacher education and professional development, and for the development, implementation, and wide dissemination of the Learning Assistant Model across diverse institutions".
[4] She and her colleague Noah Finkelstein were the joint recipients of the 2023 Svend Pedersen Lecture Award of Stockholm University.