Nipa Shah

Nipa Shah is the Director of the Goddard Space Flight Center Office of Procurement.  In this role, she is responsible for planning and execution of all Goddard procurements with accountability for a range of multi-program and institutional activities, such as source selections, sole source procurements, contract negotiation and administration, construction of facilities, contract closeout and termination, and activities that include administration of both small and minority business programs, contract reviews, cost analysis and cooperative agreements. 

Ms. Shah served in a detail as the Deputy Center Director for Technology and Research Investments (Acting) for 8 months, responsible for managing the center’s research and development portfolio. This role entailed stewarding the formulation the center’s future science, mission and technology goals and leading an integrated program of investments and partnerships to achieve strategic objectives.

Prior to that role, she served as the Deputy Director for Acquisitions of the GSFC Office of Procurement (OP) and Associate Chief leading the Earth Science procurement portfolio in the Office of Procurement, supporting the Earth Science Division, the Computational and Information Sciences and Technology Office, the Earth Science Flight Projects Division, Earth Science Technology Office and Planetary Science Projects Division. Throughout her tenure in the Goddard Office of Procurement, she has supported such large-scale missions as ICESat-2; Landsat 9; the Space Geodesy Project; Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud Ocean Ecosystem (PACE); and the Capture, Containment and Return System of Mars Sample Return. 

Ms. Shah started her federal career in 1995 at the Defense Logistics Agency as a Contract Specialist and spent three years at Arthur Andersen’s Office of Government Services. She moved to NASA GSFC in 2002 and has remained at NASA since that time.  During her tenure at Goddard, Nipa has served every directorate of the Center, as well as the Independent Verification & Validation Facility, Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Wallops Flight Facility as Contracting Officer, branch head, procurement policy analyst and Office of Procurement division management.

She is the recipient of several individual and group NASA Honor and Robert H. Goddard Honor Awards and is most proud of receiving the NASA Leadership Medal in 2016.