NAILD Creates Scholarship to Honor the Memory of Paul Hafner

The National Association of Innovative Lighting Distributors (NAILD), Princeton Junction, NJ, will keep the memory of industry icon Paul Hafner alive with a memorial scholarship. Hafner, who passed away in July, was known as a thought leader who launched NAILD’s Lighting Specialist training programs.

NAILD is accepting scholarship donations to fund the lighting education of the first three recipients in 2019. One recipient will receive a free “The Transition of Legacy Sources to LED” (LS-I) course, another will receive a free “Lighting Specialist II” (LS-II) course and a third will receive a free Lighting Specialist-Controls” (LS-C) course. The application deadline is March 1, 2019.

“Paul was inspiring,” said Cory Schneider, NAILD president and CEO of Lighting Unlimited “Any question you had on lighting, Paul had a story that would make you think. Most educators have never been in the field, but Paul was a field guy who became an educator. He was passionate and made it his life’s work until he died in July 2018.”

Hafner worked in the lighting industry for nearly 30 years. He created NAILD’s “The Transition of Legacy Sources to LED” (LS-I) and “Lighting Specialist II” (LS-II). LS-I helps lighting sales employees better understand how and when customers should retrofit their facilities from incandescent and compact fluorescent light technologies to solid-state lighting. LS-II takes that training one step further, focusing on retail, industrial, office and educational facilities. Both courses are a combination of expert technical instruction and hands-on field experience delivered through user-friendly, self-paced online courses that Hafner narrates.