Beltrán is a doctoral student in the Educational Leadership & Policy Studies Department at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, where she is the Graduate Research Associate for the Education Research & Opportunity Center. She earned a B.S. and B.A. from the University of California, Davis and completed her M.S. degree in Child and Family Studies here at UT. Her thesis explored the experiences of educators who worked in juvenile detention centers within the U.S. Beltrán specializes in qualitative methodologies and her research interests focus on the experiences of educators and marginalized populations in higher education.