Symplicity Communications CEO Catherine Ripley said her company’s award of a seat for a prestigious NASA contract is a result of nearly two decades of hard work by her and her tech advisory team.
Symplicity was awarded the NASA Solutions for Enterprise-Wide Procurement (SEWP) VI contract in Category B and Category C in June.
“Almost 20 years ago, I started building Symplicity,” Ripley wrote on a LinkedIn post about the seat. “There was no grand plan that someday we would be a NASA SEWP contract holder. There were just customers to take care of, problems to solve, relationships to build, payrolls to make, opportunities to chase — and a whole lot of figuring things out along the way.”
“There have been incredible highs and some really hard years,” added Ripley, a 2026 Channel Partners TA Thought Leader and also a member of the Channel Partners Conference advisory board. “There have been times I’ve wondered what in the world I was doing. But I kept showing up. I kept evolving. And my team kept doing the work.”
NASA SEWP is one of the federal government premier Government-Wide Acquisition Contracts (GWACs). These contracts provide federal agencies with a streamlined, compliant way to procure advanced IT products, software, cloud solutions, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, communications technologies, and related professional services. The SEWP VI contract makes Symplicity eligible to compete for technology opportunities with federal agencies throughout the United States.
Catherine Ripley
“Symplicity earned the seat,” Ripley wrote. “I created this - every bit. Now I'm ready with what comes next. I'm going to maximize this opportunity, because Symplicity earned this seat and deserves it. I also know that being awarded the seat is just the beginning. Now we have to build the federal practice that belongs behind it.”
To help build that practice, Ripley added René Nutter and Kimberly Williams to the Symplicity team. Nutter is Symplicity’s senior director of federal programs. She has more than 20 years of experience leading business development, program execution, and strategic initiatives across the federal government, technology, research, and philanthropic sectors. Williams joins Symplicity as federal program manager. She has more than 17 years of experience leading federal telecommunications and technology programs. She has managed large government contract vehicles, including NASA SEWP, NIH CIO-CS, GSA Connections and Alliant, and enterprise telecommunications initiatives supporting federal agencies.
“They bring experience and knowledge that we need, and I’m incredibly grateful that they believed enough in what we are building to become part of it,” Ripley wrote.
Through SEWP VI, federal agencies can leverage Symplicity’s capabilities across a broad portfolio of technology solutions, including:
- Unified Communications & Contact Center Solutions
- Artificial Intelligence and Intelligent Automation
- Managed IT Services
- Cloud Infrastructure and Migration
- Cybersecurity Solutions
- Data Analytics and AI Readiness
- Telecommunications Expense Management (TEM)
- Professional Services, Project Management, and Technology Implementations.