She’s a Force, Whatever the Role

Written by: Lydia Levis Bloch, published in the Capsule, Winter 2025

Lisa Calvert Chalk, MS, PMP, recalls watching her brothers take karate lessons when she was barely 5 years old. She desperately wanted to join in. “You can’t, you’re a girl,” said her parents. Fast forward 23 years later, Calvert Chalk enrolled her 6-year-old son in martial arts. She enrolled a year later.

Today this fourth-degree black belt and master instructor of mixed martial arts says her years of training and teaching furnished her with strengths in “organization and discipline.” These two attributes have helped propel her, for the last 32 years, through multiple positions within the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy (UMSOP).

Calvert Chalk’s first job at the School was secretary in the Dean’s Office in 1992. She later joined the Department of Pharmacy Practice and Science (PPS) as an operations manager and then became a program manager. In 2022, PPS merged with the Department of Pharmaceutical Health Services Research to form the Department of Practice, Sciences, and Health Outcomes Research (P-SHOR).

“My role in the merger was to help create a new organizational structure to best serve the needs of the newly formed department and to implement that new structure,” Calvert Chalk says. She worked with leadership to establish an up-to-date administrative structure, served on the transition team to devise a strategic plan, and provided counsel and information to Jill Morgan, PharmD, BCPS, BCPPS, FNAP, chair of P-SHOR.

In her current position as senior director of special projects in P-SHOR, Calvert Chalk manages complex projects for Morgan
and the department’s vice chairs and program directors involving funding decisions, space planning, marketing, personnel, and daily operations, as well as serves as liaison to the School’s Human Resources office. She also is responsible for supervising and training non-exempt and professional staff in a department of nearly 300 employees.

Given her myriad responsibilities, Calvert Chalk considers the most important aspect of her work as strategizing with Morgan and colleagues on problem solving. “I know how to maneuver through difficult situations, to trouble shoot. I recognize what is essential to the well-being and proper functioning of the department.”

According to Morgan, there is no problem that Calvert Chalk can’t solve. “She is my right-hand person whom I depend upon
to keep the department meeting our goals,” Morgan says. “She is reliable, a leader, and an excellent sounding board for me, capable of accomplishing many tasks daily. The department relies on her for so much, and Lisa handles our needs with a smile and charm.”

Having worked in so many roles at the School of Pharmacy in her more than three decades, Calvert Chalk says the most satisfying aspect of her work is its eclectic nature. “I like the variety of my job. I’m never bored. It’s impossible for me to ever tire of my job, and I work with such great people!”

Besides depending on the organizational and disciplinary skills she acquired during her training and running a martial arts school with her husband, Calvert Chalk relies on her academic credentials. A proponent of lifelong learning, she earned a master’s degree in nonprofit management from the University of Maryland Global Campus in 2023 and recently completed a globally recognized certification as a Project Management Professional.

Calvert Chalk continues to benefit from the inner strength of her martial arts training in all aspects of her life. In addition to her UMSOP career and professional development, she finds time to indulge her enthusiasm for sports and family. “I love the Orioles and Ravens,” she says. “I am very close to my family and love spending time with all of them, including my fuzzy child Abigail, my kitty.”