During his years at NASA Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Engineering Director Pat Simpkins always embraced a leadership philosophy that included passion, energy, curiosity and a sense of humor along the way.
“Working for NASA has allowed me to exercise all four of these philosophies,” Simpkins said.
After more than 34 years with the agency, three of them at NASA Headquarters, Simpkins retired on Dec. 31, 2017.
Though his original goal was to work for the Environmental Protection Agency, he saw an ad for a position in environmental control systems at Kennedy while he was working as an assistant manager at Captain D’s in Titusville. “I weighed my options for about two seconds and applied for that position,” Simpkins said. “The rest is history.”
Simpkins began his career with NASA in 1983 as a space shuttle environmental control and life support systems engineer. He was a lead test engineer on the manned maneuvering unit for the first nontethered in-space extravehicular activity, troubleshooting problems and providing technical leadership through his presence in the Launch Control Center for more than 120 space shuttle missions.
Several years later, he became chief of the Shuttle Processing Engineering Fluid Systems Division. His managerial strengths were recognized, and he was assigned the role of Kennedy’s Personnel Officer. In that role, Simpkins developed the Leadership Excellence Achievement Program (LEAP), which is still going strong today.
At Kennedy, he formed the first knowledge management working group in the agency and developed the agency’s first competency management system. Simpkins led the workforce planning function for the reorganization known as “KSC 2000,” an effort that moved the center into a new era of research and technology development.
While working on a reassignment in the Senior Executive Service Candidate Development Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C., in 2001, Simpkins led a variety of agency-level Human Resources information management initiatives for the Office of Human Capital Management. He implemented an agencywide competency management system that was used to assess agency workforce capabilities after the space shuttle Columbia accident. He also led a team of center directors and associate administrators to develop and implement a Strategic Human Capital Plan.
He returned to Kennedy as the director of Human Resources. He led the design, development and implementation of the reorganization of the spaceflight engineering workforce, the first of its kind at the center in more than 40 years. The reorganization helped provide technical excellence to NASA spaceflight programs and expanded Kennedy’s normally ground-based role into spaceflight hardware design and operations.
Simpkins led the efforts to design and develop the center’s Engineering Directorate in 2006. He was the first director of that organization. He became its director again in 2015, after spending two years in Ground Processing.
“I have thrived here at NASA, not because of who I am or what little I know, but because of the people I have been blessed to come to know,” Simpkins said. “In the local vernacular, ‘GO Exploration! GO NASA! And keep GOING KSC!’”
Simpkins is the recipient of the Exceptional Service Medal, the NASA Astronauts’ Silver Snoopy Award, the President’s Meritorious Rank Award, and many others.
He has a bachelor’s degree in environmental engineering from the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida, and a master’s in human resource management from the Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne, Florida. He earned his doctorate in business administration from Nova Southeastern University.
Simpkins also is a graduate of the Human Resources Executive Program at the University of Michigan and was a Harvard Senior Executive Fellow.
He resides in Merritt Island with his wife (and former high school sweetheart) of more than 25 years, Beth. Their son, Dainius, is in his second year of law school.