Preet Bassi

Chief Executive Officer Center for Public Safety Excellence

Last Reviewed: September 26, 2026

Executive Summary

Preet Bassi has been Chief Executive Officer of the Center for Public Safety Excellence since 2014. CPSE is a nonprofit that accredits fire and emergency service agencies through the Commission on Fire Accreditation International, and it credentials fire officers through its Commission on Professional Credentialing. She is not a firefighter. Her background is in accreditation administration and public-sector finance: she came from the International Accreditation Service and had worked earlier in city and state government in California. She is a Certified Association Executive and runs a small organisation, with about $3.8 million in revenue in 2023 according to its IRS filings.

Career Highlights

• Chief Executive Officer of the Center for Public Safety Excellence since 2014, responsible for its accreditation, credentialing and education programmes and for strategy set by the Board of Directors.
• Previously Director of Finance and Administration at the International Accreditation Service, where she managed its Fire and Life Safety and Building Department Accreditation programmes.
• Earlier worked for the City of Anaheim, California, and the California State Assembly.
• Certified Association Executive, credentialed by the American Society of Association Executives.
• Serves on the advisory board of Drexel University’s Center for Firefighter Injury Research and Safety Trends (FIRST).

Professional Journey

Bassi studied economics and political science at the University of California, Davis, and took a master’s degree in public administration at the University of Southern California. She began her career in California government, working for the City of Anaheim and the California State Assembly.

She then moved to the International Accreditation Service as Director of Finance and Administration and managed its Fire and Life Safety and Building Department Accreditation programmes. That work took her into accrediting public-safety bodies, and it led to the Center for Public Safety Excellence, whose chief executive she became in 2014.

CPSE describes its purpose as leading the fire and emergency service to excellence. It does so through three strands: accreditation of agencies by the Commission on Fire Accreditation International, built around community risk assessment, standards of cover and community-driven strategic planning; professional credentialing of fire officers by the Commission on Professional Credentialing; and education. As CEO she oversees all of these and is responsible for carrying out the strategy set by CPSE’s board, which includes fire service leaders such as a senior executive of the International Association of Fire Fighters. The organisation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, and its reported revenue grew from about $2.6 million in 2020 to about $3.8 million in 2023.

Her Drexel University advisory board biography says she chairs the NFPA 1022 Technical Committee, which covers a standard for fire service analysts, and is vice chair of both the Congressional Fire Services Institute’s National Advisory Committee and the American Society of Association Executives’ Research Committee. The same biography says she was in the inaugural 2019 cohort of the University of Pennsylvania’s Executive Program in Social Innovation Design and completed Cornell’s Diversity and Inclusion eCertificate Program in 2020. In a May 2025 FireRescue1 interview she argued that fire departments need systems to track their practices and progress, observing that “we often do what is inspected, not what is expected”, and discussed where artificial intelligence can help departments reach the right answers faster.

Education

University of Southern California

Master’s degree, Public Administration

University of California, Davis

Bachelor’s degrees, Economics and Political Science