People – Southeast

Winter Park, Fla.-based insurance broker Kuykendall Gardner recently hired Brendan Loflin as vice president. In this role, he will be responsible for insurance and bond sales, new business development, client relations and client maintenance.

Prior to joining Kuykendall Gardner, Loflin served as a senior contracts negotiator at Lockheed Martin in Washington, D.C.

Internet search giant Google has named Vanessa Wittman as the new chief financial officer of its newly acquired Motorola Mobility Holdings unit. Wittman served as Marsh & McLennan’s CFO from September 2008 until earlier this year. In March, Marsh & McLennan Companies said Wittman would be leaving to take a senior role at Google, though neither Marsh nor Google said at the time what her new position would be.

Prior to joining Marsh & McLennan, she was CFO and executive vice president of Adelphia Communications Corp. from 2003 to 2007. Prior to Adelphia, she served as CFO of 360networks, based in Seattle. She also has held positions with Microsoft, Metricom Inc., and Morgan Stanley.

Florida-based insurance agency Brown & Brown Inc., one the country’s biggest, has named Linda S. Downs, currently regional president, as chief operating officer and named Charles H. Lydecker to the newly-created position of president of the company’s retail division, which is its largest division. Lydecker also previously served as a regional president of the company.

Effective immediately, Downs will assume leadership of internal operations and oversight of the company’s services division while continuing to be responsible for oversight of certain retail offices, and Lydecker will commence leadership of the retail operations throughout the United States.

Both Downs and Lydecker will continue to report to J. Powell Brown, president and chief executive officer, who said the promotions are an “important and necessary step” as Brown & Brown moves toward its announced goal of “2B,” that is, the attainment of $2 billion in annual revenue.

Downs began her career with Brown & Brown in 1980 with the establishment of the Orlando, Florida retail office, which she led until 1998. She was promoted to regional president in January 2011, and prior to that she held the titles of senior executive vice president (2010-11), executive vice president for leadership development (2006-10), and regional executive vice president (2001-06), respectively. In these capacities, she has had oversight responsibility for a variety of enterprises, including offices in the retail, national programs and wholesale brokerage divisions, the company’s corporate benefits and leadership development departments, and the company’s leadership schools.

Lydecker has been with Brown & Brown since 1990. He has been promoted through several positions over the years and was elected regional president in January 2011. Prior to that, he served as regional executive vice president beginning in 2002. Lydecker has worked in the Daytona Beach office since joining the company, and served as profit center leader of that office from 1999 until 2006.

Rick Hoagland has been named vice president of claims home office at GEICO. He succeeds Nancy Pierce, who was recently named regional vice president in GEICO’s Fredericksburg, Va. office.

Hoagland began his GEICO career in 1994 as a telephone claims representative in the company’s Fredericksburg office. He took on assignments in sales, service, underwriting, and was selected the company’s executive assistant program. In 2009, Hoagland was elected assistant vice president of claims of the Midwest regional operations in Macon, Ga. and was later named assistant vice president of underwriting there in 2010.