History 2000: Bill Watkins COO and also President of Seagate

Bill Watkins’ stock is on the rise, since the COO of Seagate has just, in addition, become president, a position held until now by Steve Luczo, 43, who retains his title as CEO.

Two other major promotions concern Dave Wickersham, 44, and Brian Dexheimer, 37, who move up from senior to EVP, the former for global disk operations, the latter for global sales and marketing, product line management and customer service operations.

Both appointments are the result of the imminent retirement of 2 current EVPs reporting directly to Luczo, Bernie Carballo, 51, in charge of global sales and marketing, product line marketing and customer service, who hangs his hat in July, and Dan Colton, 52, leaving this month, who managed corporate quality.

The new president Bill Watkins, 47, had worked previously at Domain Technology before joining Conner Peripherals, where he established the disk media division in 1990. With the acquisition of Conner by Seagate, he was named executive VP and COO of the latter’s recording media group, then in August 1998, promoted to COO of the entire firm with responsibility for HDD manufacturing, recording media and head operations. As president, he will handle the day-to-day responsibilities for all of Seagate’s disk storage operations and related product development organizations, while Luczo concentrates on long-range strategy.

This article is an abstract of news published on issue 149 on June 2000 from the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter.

Note: Bill Watkins was ousted in January 2009 as CEO of Seagate.