Steve McMahon is the Founder of Intervention Support Service and the CEO of MindSet Safety Management, a nationwide educational consulting organization built on a trauma-responsive approach to crisis intervention in schools and behavioral health settings.

With over thirty years of experience in special education, Steve began his career in 1989 as a special education teacher working with students who had been pushed to the margins of traditional schooling. Those early years — including nearly a decade at a specialized therapeutic program — shaped his conviction that struggling children need connection, not control.

In 1998, Steve met Marshall Siler, whose systematic framework for crisis intervention gave language and structure to what Steve had been practicing intuitively. Marshall developed the MindSet Four-Step Model — Acknowledgment, Acceptance, Validation, Empowerment — and together they refined and expanded it across schools and districts. Steve coined the phrase “connection over control” to describe the philosophy at the heart of the approach, a phrase that has since become central to how MindSet’s work is understood and taught.

Following Marshall’s death in 2017, Steve continued to honor the founder’s vision while advancing the work into new populations and settings — behavioral health organizations, national conferences, and international partnerships including recent expansion to Kenya. In 2022, David Brown became his co-owner and partner, bringing additional leadership to the growing mission.

Steve is also the author of Transformative Crisis Management: A Journey to a MindSet (2025), a professional resource for educators and clinicians implementing connection-based crisis intervention.

He presents regularly at national education conferences, consults directly with school districts, and trains practitioners across the country on building systems of support for their most vulnerable populations.

Steve lives with his wife Tammy in the mountains of Clayton, Georgia.