Brightway Adds Staplin as In-House Counsel, Promotes Maddox, Pollard

Jacksonville, Fla.-based Brightway Insurance has added Max Staplin as its in-house counsel and member of its executive leadership team.

In this new role, Staplin will oversee all legal and compliance matters for the company.

According to Brightway Co-Founder and CEO Michael Miller, Staplin was previously an associate at the law firm that provides Brightway’s legal counsel for all franchise-related matters for six years.

He comes to Brightway with eight years of legal experience, much of which is in franchise law.

Brightway also made two promotions in the company. Chinikqua Maddox, who joined Brightway a year ago as the company’s Strategic Initiatives leader, has been promoted to vice president of Strategic Initiatives.

Maddox has led development and execution of the highest-priority strategic initiatives across Brightway and supervised Brightway’s Information Technology, Systems Administration and Business Analytics teams. In this new position, she has joined the Brightway executive leadership team and will expand her responsibilities directing key initiatives that advance the company’s long-term growth plans and profitability.

Prior to joining Brightway, Maddox was an independent insurance consultant who performed product development, project management and general consulting services for clients, such as Brightway. She held senior management roles at Citizens Property Insurance Corp., The Hanover Insurance Group, The Hartford and IBM.

Scott Pollard, who joined Brightway in September 2018 as an agency development consultant, has been named director of Agency Development. In this role, Pollard will focus on building and executing sales best practices with a focus on franchisee profitability.

Pollard brings with him to this role 30 years’ property/casualty insurance management experience, starting as a personal lines customer service representative and later manager in an agency in Darien, Conn. He has held a wide variety of sales process, management and executive roles at Safeco for 16 years, and executive roles at Kemper, Citizens/Hanover and UPC Insurance. He replaces industry veteran, Mike Gleghorn, who previously held the role until his retirement in December 2018.

As a national property/casualty insurance distribution company, Brightway is focused on providing a platform that helps business people become insurance entrepreneurs. In turn, they build their local brand and serve people in their communities by offering choice in insurance companies coupled with local, in-person expert counsel.