Ernesta Gertrude Procope (née Forster) (2 September 1923 – 30 November 2021) was an American investment banker and insurance executive who was the head of the largest insurance agency run by a Black woman.
[1] Ernesta Gertrude Forster was born on Feb. 9, 1923, in Brooklyn and was raised in Bedford-Stuyvesant.
[2] She founded the commercial insurance brokerage firm E. G. Bowman, Inc. in 1953, naming it after her husband who had died the previous year.
[3] In 1977, E. G. Bowman became the first African American owned business to be located on Wall Street.
[5] For this conflict of interest, she, the president, and sixteen other members of the board were removed from their posts.