Retired, Hewlett-Packard
Candy Charity earned a bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering from Iowa State University in 1979 and a Master of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Idaho in 1989.
Charity joined Hewlett-Packard in 1980 in Boise, Idaho, as a member of the HP head and media technology center, whose products were designed and manufactured for HP disk drives. She was involved in the test development for those products.
From 1983 to 1993, she was involved in the firmware and hardware design for several 8” disk drives, involved in the design and simulation of a standard cell IC, oversaw the product design reliability program for two generations of 3½” disk drives and was the manufacturing and technical marketing support engineer for two generations of 3½” disk drives.
Charity joined the Hewlett-Packard management team in 1993 as a manufacturing engineering manager of a 3½” disk drive product returns team. Since then, other management assignments have included:
R&D firmware test development manager for disk drives;
Manufacturing engineering manager for DDS tape drives in Bristol, England;
Manufacturing engineering manager for disk array circuit board test development in Roseville, California;
Product support manager for new disk array product introductions;
R&D firmware engineering manager whose team provided detection and support for performance and memory related issues of LaserJet printers;
R&D firmware engineering manager whose teams provided firmware for multiple LaserJet and InkJet printer products.
Charity was accepted into the HP Early Retirement Program and has been retired since June 1st, 2007. She served on the Iowa State University Engineering College Industrial Advisory Council (ECIAC) from 2007 to 2013.
She currently resides in Boise, Idaho, with her husband, Keith Whitaker. Her current hobbies include traveling, hiking, gardening, fishing, and downhill skiing.