Dr. Lori Moore-Merrell was appointed by President Joe Biden as the U.S. Fire Administrator on October 25, 2021. Prior to her appointment, Lori served as the President and CEO of the International Public Safety Data Institute (IPSDI), which she founded after retiring from a 26-year tenure as a senior executive in the International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF). She began her fire service career in 1987 as a fire department paramedic in Memphis Tennessee.
Lori is a Doctor of Public Health and a data scientist, whose work has changed fire and EMS deployment throughout the world. As the principal investigator and senior project manager, she oversaw the development of landmark reports and other tools to improve residential and high-rise fireground operations, community risk assessment, fire and EMS resource deployment, and “Big Data Analytics”. In 2022, Dr. Moore-Merrell convened the first Summit on Fire Prevention and Control since the 1974 founding of the U.S. Fire Administration.
The Summit brought the head of every relevant government agency—and every major fire safety organization—together in the same room to articulate and execute a new National Fire Strategy for addressing firefighter recruitment, cancer screening, mental health, and climate change impact on the fire service. Dr. Moore-Merrell believes that together, we can turn a moment of crisis into an era of opportunity for the fire service.