Executive Vice President

Shinjiro Iwata is Executive Vice President for Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, headquartered in San Jose, California. He came to Hitachi GST in August 2006.

In his current role, Mr. Iwata oversees several groups, including sales, operations and logistics. He is also responsible for business planning and strategic marketing.

Mr. Iwata began his career with Hitachi Ltd. in 1972 in the Overseas Business Department. He worked his way up through various positions until he became manager of the Business Planning Department for the Information Systems Group in 1996.

From there, he joined Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) in 1997 as executive vice president. In 2000, Mr. Iwata returned to Hitachi Ltd. to serve as deputy general manager of the International Business Promotion Division. He was promoted to general manager of the Global Business Development Division in 2001. Later that year, he returned to HDS as chief executive officer. After almost five years leading HDS, he returned to Hitachi Ltd. to serve as CMO of Hitachi Ltd.’s Information and Telecommunication Systems Group.

As CEO of HDS – an important Hitachi GST customer – Mr. Iwata turned around the company, initiating a period of rapid growth and profitability. He gained valuable experience in how to turn a company into a market-driven force in its industry and learned about the hard disk drive business from a customer’s viewpoint.

Mr. Iwata earned a B.S. of engineering degree from Waseda University in Japan.