Ms. Christine Jenkins serves as the Center of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation (CoECI) Business and Technical Integration Specialist. She joined the CoECI team 4½ years ago with seasoned expertise in software management and government procurement practices. She is, in large part, singly responsible for the continued reputation of CoECI and NASA as a high value partner in the use of crowdsourcing within the Federal government. Her commitment to excellence and her ability to forge successful challenge execution teams was evident from the start. She quickly grasped how to apply her seasoned procurement expertise to CoECI’s unique operating model resulting in a significantly improved task order template clarifying the government’s requirements and easing proposal development for the NASA Open Innovation Services (NOIS) contractors.
When assigned the technically complex ARMD Fast Computing challenge, Ms. Jenkins’ intelligent, steady approach to working with the challenge owner and the NOIS vendor executing the competition resulted in a highly successful public launch. Unfortunately, ARMD leadership canceled the competition. This was unprecedented. Ms. Jenkins’ rapid decision-making working with the procurement team, the challenge owner, and the vendor resulted in the best possible outcome for all parties, creating a well-structured and repeatable process for the possibility of future task order cancelations. Her ability to work through the complexities of this effort, demonstrating a commitment to the teamwork required to turn a bad situation good, was uncanny.
Given her proven ability to excel at complex projects, as other agencies sought the services of CoECI to assist with their public competitions, Ms. Jenkins began to assume major responsibility for this work. On the initial NOIS Contract, the reimbursable work CoECI brought to JSC totaled $15M over 5 years. Ms. Jenkins led the majority of those projects. Since the launch of NOIS2, the number of agencies CoECI is working with and the value of the work they are doing has steadily increased. In just the first month of NOIS2, over $5M is already in the queue with a total value of over $43M of other agency work possible via signed interagency agreements. And more is in work. Every project worked with another agency directly benefits NASA in more than the intake of overhead fees.
Ms. Jenkins’ ensures that while she is working another agency project, every aspect of that project is integrally related to the work we are doing for NASA. Ms. Jenkins’ is currently working with NIH, USDA, NOAA, and DOI’s Bureau of Reclamation in addition to the ground-breaking work she is doing with NGA to advance the development of the solutions garnered during the early phases of the multi-million dollar MagQuest challenge. Ms. Jenkins’ ability to tailor CoECI’s general operating principles to meet each specific agency need is amazing to behold. Reclamation has benefitted significantly from Ms. Jenkins’ efforts. She is working over 12 Reclamation projects in various stages of maturity.
Their Prizes Lead recently took time to acknowledge her support with these words: “. . .Thank you for your patience and grace as we continue to work through our business model changes in our prize competition program. . . . I’m not sure I can articulate how much we appreciate you and how your efforts have taken us to the next level in our program!”
Ms. Jenkins’ commitment to the CoECI team and her ability to become a key member of every team she works with is outstanding. Without question she contributes daily to the excellence in NASA’s Center of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation. With every project she supports for another agency, she is testament to the teamwork and excellence that contributes to the success of NASA’s mission. Her achievements are worthy of this recognition. Christine – thank you so much for your service to NASA.
