PRESIDENTIAL PERSPECTIVE Recognizing the Institutional Locksmith we are not directly employed by one of these bodies. If you do much commercial locksmithing, I am sure that you do some school, government and maybe hospital work. I know I do. And, by the same token, many institutional locksmiths do jobs on the side for profit. T It may not be their main source of income, but it is still income. They are as much of a general locksmith as the rest of us once they get outside their respective agencies. The only difference is that the institutional locksmith usually deals with only a couple of manufacturers, while the rest of us deal with many of them. This is one reason it is nice to have friends who are institutional locksmiths: If you have a prob- lem with manufacturers’ locks that your friends use, those institutional locksmiths are usually much better able to diagnose and suggest repairs for you since they see much more of those locks. Join AIL If you’re an institutional locksmith and have not yet joined the AIL division, please consider it. Email [email protected] for more information, or visit the AIL tab on ALOA.org. Remember that we also have a lot of ALOA Education classes tailored to the institutional locksmith as well. Take a look at the Education calendar, and also be sure to attend the 2022 ALOA Convention in Las Vegas. There you can also go to the annual AIL member meeting and get up to date on division happenings and opportunities. John Truempy, AIL president, is a good person to be in touch with as well if you’re interested in AIL. You can get in touch with him at [email protected]. “If you’re an institutional locksmith and have not yet joined the AIL division, please consider it.” he focus of this month’s Keynotes is on the institutional locksmith. By definition, an institutional locksmith is a locksmith employed by an institution. This could be a school, a hospital or a government agency. This is where the membership of AIL is focused. In reality, many of us are “institutional locksmiths” even though Bill Mandlebaum, CML President ALOA Security Professionals Association, Inc. [email protected] WWW.ALOA.ORG OCTOBER 2021 KEYNOTES 5
