Biography

Chris is an attorney, educator, parent and grandparent. A graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the Wake Forest University School of Law, Chris was a litigation associate and partner with the law firm of Whiteford, Taylor and Preston in Baltimore and Towson, Maryland for 11 years during which time he tried cases in state and federal courts in Maryland and the District of Columbia. As an attorney, he was elected a Fellow of the Maryland Bar Foundation and received the Maryland Bar Foundation award for the Advancement of Public Understanding of the Law.

While working as an attorney volunteer with students in the Baltimore City Public School System, Chris became convinced that he could make a positive difference in the lives of students as a high school educator, so he resigned his equity partnership and worked as a policy advocate and analyst for 4 years until he could earn his teaching certificate and complete teacher training. During this period, he worked as the Education Director for the non-profit Advocates for Children and Youth and served for a year as the Director of Planning and Policy for the Baltimore City Public School System. During that year, he worked directly for the Interim Chief Executive Officer of the school system with primary responsibility to prepare the statutorily mandated Transition Plan and Master Plan for the Baltimore City Public School System in coordination with the Maryland General Assembly and the Maryland State Department of Education.

From 1999 to 2020, Chris worked as a social studies teacher at Owings Mills and Franklin high schools in the Baltimore County Public School system. In his 21 years of teaching, Chris taught Government and United Sates History at every level from special education inclusion to Advanced Placement. With his wife, attorney Patricia McHugh Lambert, Chris coached mock trial and moot court teams that won national, international, state, and regional recognition. He was honored as a Maryland High School Mock Trial Teacher of the Year, and, in 2019, was one of three teachers selected nationally to receive the American Lawyers Alliance Teacher of the Year award at the annual meeting of the American Bar Association. Chris retired in 2020 from teaching and is currently assisting on a part time basis in the early childhood education of 3 grandchildren.