Rabbi Kalisch grew up attending Westchester Reform Temple and throughout her formative years distinguished herself not only for her sincere and warm personality and brilliant intellect, but also for her beautiful voice. She received her B.A. with Distinction in Religious Studies from Yale University, where she also performed internationally with Magevet, Yale's Jewish a cappella group, and served as Vice President of Yale University’s Hillel. Upon graduation, she attended the Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion, receiving numerous academic awards, among them the most appropriate Stephen S. Wise Memorial Prize in Homiletics.

Outside of the classroom, she served as the student rabbi for congregations in New York, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, Wyoming, and the Former Soviet Union; as an educator at URJ summer camp; and as a chaplain intern at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. A former Legislative Assistant at the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, she also participated in rabbinical student delegations with the American Jewish World Service and Encounter, in the Jewish Funds for Justice’s Rabbinical Student Fellowship for Leadership in Public Life, and in the KAVOD Tzedakah Fellowship.

All of these experiences and more have helped to shape her core values as a rabbi. As she puts it, "I strive to be a rabbi when no one is watching; a rabbi for whom the rabbinate is not simply a career, but also a way of living in the world."

In addition to her pastoral work and bima presence on Shabbat and all of the Jewish holidays, she leads Shabbat Together: Kesher, directs the Center for Community Learning, teaches in the Religious School and the Early Childhood Center, staffs the Social Action and Israel committees, works with the Adult B'nai Mitzvah program, and more.