5 minute read
Bridging the Gap
from June 2025
Helping Lighting Agents Serve the Design Community
By Jeff Bristol
In today’s rapidly evolving lighting industry, technical fluency and professional credibility are no longer optional. They are essential.
Lighting agents and manufacturers who wish to successfully call on specifiers, architects, and engineers must do more than sell. They must educate, collaborate, and provide real value throughout the design and specification cycle.
To meet this growing demand, NEMRA Lighting, in collaboration with their alliance partner, the Illuminating Engineering Society (IES), is working to introduce a strategic and accessible solution: the NEMRA Lighting Stepped Educational Curriculum. This multi-level, online-based education pathway is designed to develop lighting and controls knowledge while also building a bridge toward broader industry certifications.
More importantly, it creates a mutually understood and respected foundation of lighting competency for all NEMRA Lighting members, strengthening industry trust and increasing opportunity across the entire specification chain.
Why This Curriculum Matters
The lighting industry has grown more complex, and so have the expectations of its specifiers. Whether working with a lighting designer balancing aesthetics and performance, an architect focused on integration and code compliance, or an engineer concerned with technical detail and system longevity, today’s specifier demands knowledgeable partners, not just vendors.
Yet, for many agents and manufacturers, accessing reliable, structured education on lighting and controls has often been fragmented or cost prohibitive. The NEMRA Lighting curriculum will eliminate these barriers by offering a clear, accessible path to professional growth that supports every stage of learning, from foundational knowledge to advanced specialization.
A Stepped Approach to Professional Mastery
The NEMRA Lighting Stepped Educational Curriculum is comprised of four progressive levels. Each tier is aligned to real-world job functions, customer interactions, and strategic knowledge needs, ensuring agents and manufacturers build the right expertise to serve the right audience effectively.
Level 1: NEMRA Lighting Trained
Level 1 serves as the entry point for all participants. This online collection of foundational courses focuses on basic lighting and controls principles, terminology, and system understanding, ideal for those new to the industry or seeking to solidify their core knowledge.
By completing Level 1, agents and manufacturers establish a shared baseline of lighting literacy, giving them the confidence to speak accurately and intelligently with distributors, contractors, and even specifiers.
Level 2: NEMRA Lighting Educated
Once foundational knowledge is achieved, participants move into Level 2, which focuses on the fundamentals of selling lighting and controls across a range of customer segments—including contractors, distributors, facility managers, and end users.
These modules are specifically geared toward the lighting agent and manufacturer audience. They cover best practices in product positioning, customer conversations, solution-based selling, and common application scenarios for both lighting and controls.
Level 2 is especially valuable for team members working in sales, quotations, or project management, equipping them to provide informed guidance while also deepening their understanding of customer needs.
Level 3: NEMRA Lighting Specialized
Level 3 represents the transition from generalist to specialist. This advanced tier dives deep into how lighting products and solutions are evaluated, selected, and integrated by specifiers—including lighting designers, architects, and engineers.
Courses focus on the cradle-to-grave journey of a lighting system—from concept development and design intent to bidding, approval, and long-term performance. Participants learn how to effectively engage in the specification process, anticipate pain points, and add meaningful value during critical project phases.
By completing Level 3, agents and manufacturers demonstrate their readiness to work alongside the design community—not just to sell, but to collaborate and consult.
Level 4: NEMRA Lighting Professional
Level 4 builds upon the principles of Level 3, delving into even more advanced lighting and controls applications, including layout techniques, system integration, control zoning, and aesthetic design principles.
Ideal for those supporting design-build teams, integrators, and high-performance building projects, this tier empowers professionals to speak the language of visual comfort, spatial intent, interoperability, sustainability, “lighting quality” and other key priorities for today’s specifiers.
Level 4 helps ensure that agents and manufacturers don’t just understand how systems work, but also how they serve people and places. Like Level 3, this tier will be available through trusted portals and requires verified completion to achieve certified recognition by NEMRA Lighting.
A Path Toward Industry Recognition
One of the most valuable aspects of the curriculum is that it creates a consistent and credible path for participants to show their learning progress. NEMRA Lighting will offer a centralized repository where members can upload completion acknowledgements and receive official Level 1, 2, 3, or 4 certificates.
These recognitions not only enhance personal and organizational credibility, but also serve as internal benchmarks for agencies and manufacturers looking to evaluate readiness, train new hires, or promote continued development.
Additionally, select courses at the advanced levels may serve as preparation for industry certifications such as the Lighting Certified (LC) credential, the Certified Lighting Controls Professional (CLCP™), and others such as CLMC® or LS-C. This approach allows participants to use the NEMRA Lighting curriculum as a launchpad for long-term specialization and career advancement.
Building Trust with the Specification Community
The end goal of this program is simple but powerful: to help agents and manufacturers build stronger, more trusted relationships with specifiers, architects, and engineers as well as with distributors and contractors by speaking their language, understanding their process, and respecting their challenges.
By committing to structured learning, NEMRA Lighting members not only improve their own skills but also elevate the professionalism and credibility of the independent representative model. In doing so, they position themselves not just as sellers, but as strategic partners, ready to contribute to the design process and deliver better outcomes for every stakeholder involved.
In an industry where knowledge is power and credibility is currency, the NEMRA Lighting Stepped Educational Curriculum will offer a clear, accessible path forward. For lighting agents and manufacturers ready to grow, adapt, and lead, the journey towards an enlightened and elevated lighting industry starts here.
