SoftBank Robotics America (SBRA), the North American arm of the global leader in robotics solutions, today announced Brady Watkins has been appointed President of the company. Watkins previously served as Senior Vice President & General Manager of SBRA.
During his tenure at the company, Watkins helped to scale and commercialize Whiz, a collaborative robot vacuum designed to work alongside cleaning teams, throughout the U.S., and played an important role in ensuring North America helped drive towards 20K units in market globally. These efforts contributed to SoftBank Robotics Group Corp. becoming the number one seller of indoor facility mobility robots in the world. Watkins has also overseen SBRA’s expansion into the outdoor automation market entering the company into a strategic development and equity partnership with Autonomous Solutions Inc. The partnership will accelerate the development and deployment of practical landscaping care and logistics solutions.
In his new role, Watkins will continue to help partners succeed in their automation-enabled business innovations, focusing on products and services for commercial management in sectors such as real estate, transportation, and retail. He will continue to lead the organization’s foray into new product lines, while maintaining his work across development, engineering, marketing, and customer success to tailor strategic connected robotics solutions to partners’ needs and business objectives.
“We’re grateful for Brady’s demonstrated leadership in our organization, as well as his ability to unite stakeholders in the robotics industry,” said Kent Yoshida, Chief Business Officer at SoftBank Robotics Group (SBRG). “As ongoing labor shortages throughout the globe have created increased demand for autonomous solutions, we see great potential for growth in the U.S. market and look forward to working with Brady and the SBRA team to achieve these goals.”
Before joining SBRA, Watkins led digital client solutions for a global marketing execution agency, as well as spending over 10 years with a top three global video game publisher marketing new and existing brands, building sales strategy and integration divisions, and leading sales teams. He’s an alumnus of University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business.