She was one of the founders of the journal Latin American Perspectives in 1974 and a co-founder in 1976, or the first women's studies program offered at the University of California, Irvine.

[6] They moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, where Stoltz graduated from James Logan High School in Union City, California in 1962,[1] and continued her education at Raymond College in Stockton.

[8] At UCI, she and mathematician Janet Williams designed a women's studies curricula in 1976, which included courses in social science, biology, and literature.

[19] In the early 1980s, Chinchilla founded the Guatemala Information Center in Los Angeles, to provide assistance to immigrants new to the area.

[22] After losing her tenure battle, Chinchilla began working at California State University, Long Beach, as an associate professor in 1983, where she jointly taught sociology and women's studies.

[8][23][24] Throughout her teaching career, she continued her activism, for example, attending the Latin American and Caribbean Feminist Encuentros in the 1980s and 1990s,[25] and speaking out against anti-immigration sentiments regarding admittance of migrants to school systems in 2014.

[27] California State Long Beach honored her with the Distinguished Faculty Scholarly and Creative Achievement Awards for the academic term 1996–1997.

[30] She put forth the argument that the lack of knowledge of early feminist movements, particularly the organizing work done by radical, socialist, and anarchist women in the region, prevented the emergence of Second-wave feminism.

Because they lacked the resources to visit and stay in contact with families abroad and many were undocumented, they either had to create networks themselves, or locate sympathetic activists from the Sanctuary or Chicano Movements to help with labor and immigration questions.

[43] In her review of Seeking Community in a Global City, Tamar Diana Wilson called Chinchilla and Hamilton's book, "exemplary" for its efforts to highlight immigrant rights, migrant work organization, and their self-help networks" and recommended it as a model to examine other urban ethnic groups.

[44] In 2002, Chinchilla and Hamilton shared the American Political Science Association's The Best Book Award, in the category of Race/Ethnicity and Foreign Policy/Globalization for Seeking Community in a Global City.