Dr. Portillo is an Assistant Professor in the Criminology, Law & Society Department and Deputy Director of the Center for Justice, Law & Society at George Mason University.

Her research and teaching interests include law and society as they apply to public bureaucracies. She is particularly interested in the influence of growing racial, ethnic, and gender diversity in public employment and how it affects the meanings of law and rules for public officials. She is a qualitative researcher whose particular proficiency is in narrative and conversational analysis and interviewing. She has recently completed research on the mobilization of rules and laws by public officials, which will appear in Law & Social Inquiry, and on gender and organizational rule abidance, which appeared in Public Administration Review. Her work primarily focuses on informal (social) and formal (legal) influences on organizational actors’ behavior.

Dr. Portillo received her Ph.D. in public administration with a specialization in public law and emphasis field of gender and ethnic studies from the University of Kansas.