"The two most powerful warriors are patience and time…so remember; great achievements take time, there is no overnight success.”

Fitz McKinnon is the President and Founder of Scrambling 2 Perform, Inc., a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization committed to improving the overall educational outcomes of African-American students in Long Island’s economically disadvantaged and affluent school districts. Fitz is a member of 100 Black Men of Eastern New York, a member of the African-American Chamber of Commerce, sits on the steering committee for the Long Island Youth Summit and is a member of the Wyandanch Family Day Committee. In 2022, he returned to Wyandanch High School as the Head Coach for Varsity Football. Fitz is also a Certified Life Coach. He currently resides in Wheatley Heights.

Throughout his career and personal life, Fitz has discovered and nurtured a passion for helping others to realize their potential through sharing his own learning and growth experiences to help them transform their lives to achieve personal and professional success. As a former starting Ivy League Quarterback for the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in American History and a Minor in African-American History, Fitz brings a unique perspective of leadership and performance to the conversations with his clients. He uses his journey of scrambling 2 perform along with his professional and personal experiences around leadership to inspire individuals and businesses to run more smoothly and effectively.  

Fitz’ ambition for excellence has brought him clients from many industries and backgrounds. His diverse experience in Information Technology, mostly healthcare, allows him to transcend industry lines to assist organizations in creating solutions to help their businesses increase their productivity and their profitability. His execution of results-oriented, innovative approaches enables clients to discover their hidden potential and achieve outcomes once thought to be out of reach.  

Fitz is an expert at developing leaders, team building, creating high performing teams, and delivering quality customer service. He works with management and staff at all levels of an organization to understand what success looks like and then creates transformational solutions that consider multiple facets of the individual and the organization. In 2001, after working as a key member on the Deployment Team at Philip Morris, USA for their major upgrade from Windows 95 to Windows 2000, Fitz would join the newly formed Catholic Health Services of Long Island (CHS) as a Deployment Coordinator for their Transformation Project – integrating 5 hospitals into one health system. In 2003, he was recognized by senior management for his outstanding customer service efforts for “re-establishing the company’s credibility due to his deployment efforts.” As a Manager and a Director for CHS Desktop Services division, with an average staff of over 50 employees, Fitz would successfully oversee the implementation of the multi-million Affordable Care Act, the acquisitions of many physician practices, hundreds of implementations, upgrades, and device refreshes throughout his career. 

In 2015, Fitz received the company’s Living the Mission Award in recognition for exemplifying the company’s mission values of respect, justice, integrity and excellence for his work within the Wyandanch community and with its youth. In 2016, Fitz was nominated for the company’s Patrick Scollard Leadership Award, its top leadership award. Fitz assisted with coordinating the company’s annual Toy Drive since 2008, helping to deliver over 4,000 toys to community based organizations for families to ensure their children would have a joyous holiday. In 2019, Fitz received the Business of the Year Community Award from the Melville Chamber of Commerce, for inspiring members to support children in need throughout Long Island during the holiday season.

A native of Wyandanch, New York, Fitz is committed to revitalizing his home town and similar economically disadvantaged communities throughout Long Island by educating and empowering the youth, parents, residents, law enforcement, and local businesses to work together for everyone to grow and become successful. With safer communities, better relationships with law enforcement, more engaged parents, higher performing school districts, and businesses that practice diversity, inclusion, and equity; there will be more opportunities to become a respectable and thriving community.  

Fitz is President and Co-Founder of the Wyandanch Junior Warriors youth sports program founded in 2011 to provide area youth with a safe environment to play in and learn how to achieve success in life through sports. After a surge of shootings and murders in Wyandanch between 2013 and 2015, Fitz organized the #ENOUGH Committee to help eradicate violence in Wyandanch. Former Wyandanch residents, Town of Babylon officials and the Suffolk County Deputy Police Commissioner all committed to working together to make Wyandanch safer. Fitz also co-authored the Wyandanch Creed, a pledge for all community members to stop violence. A year later in 2016, the Junior Warriors would receive the Suffolk County Police Athletic League (PAL) Football Sportsmanship Award. They were recognized for being the only organization (of over 50 representing more than 300 teams) not to have an on or off the field reported incident for the season. In 2019, Fitz would win his first youth championship with the Junior Warriors as his 10-year-old team came back from an 18-0 deficit to win 25-24 after stopping a 2-point conversion at the end of the game to preserve the victory – the only team in the history of Suffolk County PAL Football to accomplish this feat in a championship game.

The team was commended for displaying great sportsmanship throughout the game. In high school, Fitz’ team won the Sportsmanship Awards three times, his varsity team that he coached won one time and his youth organization won the award one time. Fitz has always valued “how you play the game” – the lessons that are parallel to your life experiences outside of football. At Penn, while leading the football team as 1 of the 3 shortest quarterbacks in their football’s gloried program, he was named The Football Club Freshmen Offensive Move Valuable Player after leading the team to an undefeated season. As a sophomore on the varsity team, Fitz would come off of the bench to “jump-start” the offense when it was not producing – “Make things happen” became his specialty from his very first varsity play. His determination to defy the odds along with his unique style of play would be the foundation of his leadership style that he has successfully utilized throughout his career.

Fitz’ passion for working youth was spawned by an opportunity to work as a youth counselor with inner city Philadelphia High School students that were part of a program call “Say Yes to Education” during his junior year at Penn. He worked with the at-risk youth that were determined to get their high school degree. Most of the kids had dropped out of school due to legal reasons, teenage pregnancy, work obligations, or other personal reasons but wanted to return to school to get their degree. Inspired by the gratitude he received as being a mentor to some of the students and having an opportunity to have a positive impact on them to help them discover and attain their dreams, Fitz would later in life come to realize his purpose and mission of helping others succeed through performing at their highest potential despite the obstacles they may face in life. Everyone has the potential within them to be successful leaders. With the proper guidance, that potential can be developed and utilized to create the results you want, “scrambling is an art, but you must have a plan 2 start.”