His father, a field manager in the oil industry, relocated the family every five years, from Venezuela to Canada to Wyoming, eventually settling in Pampa, Texas (USA).
After graduating from Pampa High School in 1971, Watkins enlisted in the Army as a medic, assisting injured Vietnam veterans at a Missouri base.
After leaving the Army and graduating from the University of Texas, Watkins hitchhiked to California, where he landed a job at Xidex, a Silicon Valley floppy disk manufacturer.
When Seagate acquired Conner, then-CEO Al Shugart made Watkins responsible for the company's four drive factories.
The engineers started small, reducing the number of screws used in each product, and worked their way up to complex heads that write data onto the disks.
Each year, 200 employees spend a week hiking, kayaking, mountain biking and rappelling in preparation for a grueling one-day race.
The company has also lost market share in the hot notebook computer segment and is behind the innovation curve on up-and-coming solid state drives.