June 25, 2015 – Rita Harrold, director of technology with the Illuminating Engineering Society of North America (IES), will be retiring after 23 years with the society.

Harrold was the first woman elected president of the IES, becoming the Society’s 81st president (1985-86) and then IES fellow. In 1992, she joined the IES staff as director of educational and technical development (now director of technology). During Harrold’s tenure, she became IES’s chief liaison to the lighting industry, built the Society’s education program, and guided hundreds of technical documents and standards to publication, IES stated. Her retirement is effective June 30.

“Spending almost 50 years in the lighting industry, 23 years of which in lighting standards development, has afforded a wonderful opportunity to participate in so many exciting changes in areas of product development and application, and challenges of helping to develop technical recommendations and educational programs to satisfy new requirements in building codes and energy legislation,” said Harrold. “When you love an industry it is hard to step away but I am looking forward to ‘next steps’ and continuing to participate in different ways.”

Paul Mercier, president of the IES, said Harrold “elevated” the society as “the authority on consensus-based lighting recommended practices”, and her guidance for the technical committees that write lighting standards has become a “benchmark for the industry.”