Porter served five years as a corporate litigator at
BakerHostetler before she was hired as director of standards and practices at ABC News. While there, she met the
Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker
Morgan Neville, with whom she helped secure the rights to archival ABC footage for his 2015 Sundance documentary
Best of Enemies. In 2011, she executive produced
The Green, an independent film directed by
Steven Williford based on a script by
Paul Marcarelli. The documentary about three black
public defenders working in the American Deep South premiered at the
Sundance Film Festival in 2013, where it won the festival's "Documentary Editing Award". The film also won the Creative Promise Award at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival.
Gideon’s Army premiered on
HBO in July 2013, and was later nominated for an
Emmy Award, and an
Independent Spirit Award for Best Documentary Feature. The film also won the
Ridenhour Award for best documentary film in 2014. In his review of the film in
The New York Times, critic
Stephen Holden explained that the title of the film refers to "Gideon's Army," the idealistic public defenders. The army is named after
Clarence Earl Gideon, who was arrested in 1961 for stealing soda and a few dollars from a pool hall in Panama City, Fla. Without money to afford to hire a lawyer, he was convicted and imprisoned. While in prison, he appealed his case to the
U.S. Supreme Court, resulting in the landmark 1963 decision
Gideon v. Wainwright holding that a criminal defendant who cannot afford to hire a lawyer must be provided one at no cost. which debuted on
PBS in 2014. It is 53-minute documentary shot in black and white about
Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission (MSSC) efforts to preserve
segregation during the 1950s and 1960s, including the use of an extensive spy network and violent cover-ups. The film was written by
Rick Bowers and directed by Porter. In 2015, Porter directed and produced
Rise: The Promise of My Brother’s Keeper, a film for
The Discovery Channel chronicling
President Obama’s program to help young men of color succeed. Porter says she decided it was her duty to make this film after discovering there was only one abortion clinic in the entire state of Mississippi. During production, she and her team spent three years filming in abortion clinics spending time in Mississippi, Alabama and Texas. She interviewed abortion providers including
Dr. Willie Parker. The title of the documentary was derived from the term TRAP Laws ("Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers"), which have led to the closure of hundreds of southern US clinics mainly in areas that service poor women and women of color. Due to the film's potent subject matter on abortion, police were hired to stand guard outside screenings, and to check for weapons at the door. Her one-hour documentary about Vernon Jordan,
Vernon Jordan: Make it Plain, premiered on PBS on September 1, 2020. The film includes interviews with historian
Henry Louis Gates and former
President Bill Clinton, whom Jordan served as an advisor. Also in 2020, Porter's documentary
John Lewis: Good Trouble about the late civil rights icon John Lewis
, which screened at the
Tribeca Film Festival, was released by
Magnolia Pictures theatrically and on
Apple, Amazon and other streaming platforms. The film features interviews with Bill Clinton,
Hillary Clinton, the late
Elijah Cummings,
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez,
Ayanna Pressley, Henry Louis Gates Jr.,
Nancy Pelosi,
Cory Booker,
Stacey Abrams and
Ilhan Omar.
The Way I See It, a documentary about
White House photographer
Pete Souza and his time behind the scenes during
Ronald Reagan and
Barack Obama's presidencies. It premiered at the
2020 Toronto International Film Festival and opened in 124 theaters the following weekend, grossing an estimated $25,000 with a per-theater average of $200, per
Deadline. The documentary was released by
Focus Features,
MSNBC Films and
Peacock. To coincide with the
November 2020 election, the film made its debut on MSNBC on October 9 and was then available to stream on Peacock starting October 23. In 2021, Porter's documentary,
Rise Again: Tulsa and the Red Summer, about the
Tulsa Race Massacre, premiered on
Juneteenth on
Hulu and
National Geographic Channel. Deneen Brown, an award-winning
Washington Post journalist who has written about the massacre, appears frequently in
Rise Again as well as in
Tulsa: The Fire and the Forgotten, a documentary which she produced and which premiered on PBS on the 100th anniversary of the Massacre. In a review of the film for
Variety, Lisa Kennedy wrote: "Among Porter’s skills is her ability to ask questions of institutions while hewing to the human subjects driving her narratives." In 2021, she directed and produced
The Me You Can’t See: A Path Forward, a town hall style "companion piece" to the original
Apple + documentary ''
The Me You Can't See, in which Oprah and Prince Harry discuss mental health. It premiered for free on Apple TV on May 28, 2021.'' In 2022, Porter partnered with
Nicole Newnham on a four-part docu-series
37 Words, for
ESPN, which premiered on June 21, 2022, celebrating the 50th anniversary of
Title IX. That same year, she returned to Sundance as executive producer of Paula Eiselt and
Tonya Lewis Lee’s Hulu documentary
Aftershock, which delves into the crisis of
Black maternal mortality in the United States. In 2023, Porter's nearly four-hour docu-series
Deadlocked: How America Shaped the Supreme Court premiered on
Showtime.
Colin Firth was among the film's executive producers In May 2024, CNN announced it had acquired the documentary with plans to show it on CNN, OWN and
Max. In February 2024, Porter announced she was working on a documentary on the relationship between
Nelson Mandela and his wife
Winnie Mandela, based on
Winnie and Nelson: Portrait of a Marriage, by South African writer and scholar
Jonny Steinberg. Porter said she will produce through her production company Trilogy Films alongside the
Schultz Family Foundation, marking the first time that foundation is venturing into storytelling. In 2024, Porter directed the film
Power of the Dream which details
WNBA player activism during their 2020 season. Porter directed and executive produced
The Sing Sing Chronicles focusing on wrongfully convicted men incarcerated at
Sing Sing Correctional Facility for
MSNBC. It won best documentary at the 2025 News & Documentary Emmy Awards. In 2025, Porter executive produced
Eyes on the Prize III: We Who Believe in Freedom Cannot Rest, a six-part
HBO series which follows the original
PBS series
Eyes on the Prize. ==Filmography==