History (1998): Kathy Braun Retiring From WD

Kathy A. Braun, 47, is retiring as president and COO of the personal storage division (PSD), the largest operation at Western Digital.

“1 want to move on now and devote more of my energies to my family, church, and community,” she explained.

Braun joined WD in 1978 and was named head of the disk controller business in 1982. In 1988, she led the company’s entry into the HDD industry with the acquisition of Tandon’s HDD business, and during the course of the next 10 years oversaw the development of the Caviar line of desktop drives.

At the same time, Matthew E. Massengill, 37, was appointed VP and GM of PSD. For the past year, he served as head of the enterprise storage group (ESG).

Chuck Haggerty, COB, CEO and president of the company, will serve as acting GM of ESG until a successor to Massengill is found.

In an unrelated announcement, Russell Stern, 42, was promoted VP, personal storage engineering, and was named a corporate officer by the company’s board of directors. Before joining WD in 1994, he worked for IBM, MiniStor, Seagate, Adaptec and Tandon.

This article is an abstract of news published on issue 128 on September 1998 from the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter.