Scott Blackburn

Mr. Scott R. Blackburn was appointed the Department of Veterans Affairs Interim Deputy Secretary on February 26, 2017.

Mr. Blackburn previously served as Interim Executive Director of the MyVA Task Force. In that role, Mr. Blackburn helped lead the Department’s ambitious transformational journey to be a world-class service provider and the No. 1 customer-service agency in the Federal government.

Mr. Blackburn joined the Department of Veterans Affairs in November 2014 as Senior Advisor to the Secretary on VA Transformation. In that capacity, he helped conceive, design, launch, and manage VA’s transformation initiative to provide Veterans more consistent, high-quality experiences. Prior to joining VA, Mr. Blackburn was a consultant at the global management consulting firm McKinsey & Company, where he was named a partner in 2011. At McKinsey & Company, Mr. Blackburn was known for his expertise transforming cultures of large, often bureaucratic, Fortune 500 companies.

Mr. Blackburn is a Veteran of Operation Enduring Freedom. He is one of five children, all of whom are Veterans, and his father, grandfathers, uncles, and both a brother- and sister-in-law have served the Nation in uniform. Mr. Blackburn is 1999 graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he studied Mechanical Engineering. He was commissioned in the United States Army through the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) and served in the Army from 1999 to 2003 as an Armor and Signals Corps officer. Mr. Blackburn was medically discharged from the Army after suffering a non-combat-related back injury in Kuwait when returning from Afghanistan and Operation Anaconda. VA’s Vocational Rehabilitation Program, however, facilitated his transition from uniform to university, and in 2005, Mr. Blackburn graduated from Harvard Business School.

Mr. Blackburn was born in Concord, Massachusetts, and was raised in Scituate, a seacoast town south of Boston. He receives his healthcare at the Washington VA Medical Center and in the local community through the Veterans Choice Program.