President & Chief Operating Officer, Performance Food
Search every verified Scott Mcpherson interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Scott McPherson, president and chief operating officer at Performance Food, has also been active as the first responder program coordinator for Reboot Recovery, a faith-based trauma recovery organization. In a September 2024 podcast appearance, McPherson discussed his own trauma from serving in Desert Storm and his work with Reboot, which offers peer-led courses at over 400 locations in the U.S. and 11 countries. He described moral injury as "a perceived or actual witnessing or being unable to prevent actions that transgress deeply held moral values," and said that first responders often face a "default response to trauma" of denial, numbing, and isolation)Skip. McPherson stated that "wellness is not optional" and emphasized the importance of community in pulling people out of isolation, noting that the organization welcomes participants of any faith background. McPherson also shared personal struggles, saying he "struggled deeply after leaving the military due to injury and betrayals" and reached a point where he had "a bottle on one side and a pistol on the other," but did not act on it because he had a son. He criticized the attitude in some agencies that first responders should "suck it up" rather than seek help, and said that asking for help can lead to being "asked to turn in their badge or put on the sidelines," which he called "a betrayal of trust." McPherson called for more people who have experienced trauma to serve as leaders in recovery efforts, stating, "What we need more than anything else are people who have been there."
“We tend to find that if we're fixers, called to calm chaos in someone's life, the question becomes what happens when we can't fix it or calm the chaos? We end up blaming somebody else, God, or ourselves, and all three results can be pretty toxic, especially accumulated over time.”
“Moral injury is a perceived or actual witnessing or being unable to prevent actions that transgress deeply held moral values. It’s not necessarily that we did something wrong, but it could be that we failed to prevent something or think we failed to prevent someone else from doing something.”
“One of the hardest betrayals is when someone reaches out for help and then is asked to turn in their badge or put on the sidelines, removed from the team. That step of asking for help and then being categorized differently is a really hard thing to get over and is a betrayal of trust.”
“The default response to trauma is to deny, cry, numb, and run. If we're not intentional, this cycle is natural but destructive, leading to substance abuse, overwork, and ultimately sometimes suicide.”
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