Highlights
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During her journey at UCF, accounting alum Natalie Otero ’26 gained industry experience by completing an internship with the Lockheed Martin College Workforce Experience Program and two more with Deloitte.
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This summer, Otero is again interning with Deloitte before pursuing a master’s in accounting at the University of North Carolina — setting her up for a successful career as an accountant.
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Otero’s academic experiences, as well as extracurricular involvements computing student organization Knight Hack and the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance program helped her earn a 2026 Order of Pegasus Award, UCF’s highest student honor.
Natalie Otero ’26 may have missed her graduation ceremony this spring, but she had a good excuse. She’d just landed in Japan for a long-awaited vacation that was three years in the making. She says the trip — where she discovered new interests (sword-making), traversed a mountain and bonded with friends — symbolized her UCF experience.
“Building knowledge and strengthening friendships,” Otero says. “That’s my story at UCF.”
Those relationships led her pivot from pre-med to accounting and opened her up to learn new skills like coding. Friends fueled her drive, brought her joy and encouraged internships, all of which she credits for her induction into the Order of Pegasus, the highest honor for UCF students.
“When I started at UCF, I didn’t know anyone,” says the Jacksonville, Florida, native. “Everything changed quickly.”
Discovering Her Own Calling
Otero didn’t really want to be a doctor. She just heard she was supposed to be a doctor.
“When you do well in high school, people say, ‘Oh, be a doctor and cure cancer.’ That’s where my mind was when I arrived as a freshman,” says Otero, who began her UCF journey studying biomedical sciences.
Then an elective class, Principles of Financial Accounting, intervened.
“The professor, Jeff Reinking ’13PhD, broke the mold of what it means to be an accountant,” she says. “The concepts made such perfect sense that I switched my major to accounting and saw a clear path ahead. For a freshman, that’s exciting.”
That same year, Otero’s friends introduced her to KnightHacks, a student organization that hosts UCF’s biggest software-building marathon annually for hundreds of students from throughout the nation.
“I said I’d go for fun. Only one girl in our group was a computer science major, but we were able to use basic coding theories to build a program from scratch in 36 hours,” she says. “We didn’t need to win. Learning and becoming closer, those were our awards.”
A Powerful Cycle for Success
Otero needed no push but says her friends at UCF became like iron sharpening iron. They’d talk about work experiences, which made Otero feel as if she needed to catch up. As a sophomore, she applied for the (CWEP), a year-long paid opportunity that enables undergraduate and graduate students to gain real-world work skills and abilities relevant to their academic and career goals.
“I guess they sensed something genuine because they offered the position to me,” she says.
A few months later, she was chosen for another internship, this one with Deloitte. By the time she started her junior year, she had experience with two corporations, had become a hackathon regular and developed a hunger for accounting coursework.
“It all comes full circle. The instructors bring business experiences to the lessons, and we take lessons into businesses,” she says. “I’d leave [Associate Professor] Sean Dennis’s class and think auditing must be the most exciting subject ever. All along, my friends and I kept encouraging each other.”
Her True Inspiration
Word about Otero’s accounting skills spread until people began asking her to help with their taxes. She routinely gives her time and skillset to the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) program, where she serves people limited by income, language and disabilities.
“My dad walked me through financial knowledge, and with VITA I have the privilege of doing the same for others,” she says.
Otero has drawn more than financial knowledge from her family. Her paternal grandparents came to the U.S. from Cuba at young ages as part of Operaçion Pedro Pan, an agreement of cooperation between the U.S. State Department and Catholic Charities of Miami in the 1960s that saw more than 14,000 unaccompanied children sent by their parents to Miami, away from the growing communist regime in Cuba.
“This has been so much better than I imagined when I came to UCF and didn’t know anyone.” — Natalie Otero ’26
“It was hard, but my grandparents talk about how happy they were to be in the U.S., even with limited resources and not knowing when they’d see their parents again,” Otero says. “They’ve always been optimistic because they know the value of opportunities and they worked hard to make the most of them.”
Otero’s own optimism engages friends, and her work ethic has led to the Order of Pegasus award, another internship with Deloitte this summer and graduate school in the fall at UNC Chapel Hill.
“It’s hard to believe,” Otero says. “This has been so much better than I imagined when I came to UCF and didn’t know anyone. Everything is more rewarding, too, because of all the people who have made it possible.”
