Katharine Graham was a pioneering business leader who helped take her company, The Washington Post, to new heights and into the mainstream of American life.

Ernesta Procope's rise to fame as an influential figure in corporate America came at a time when few Black women filled seats in boardroom of the nation's largest companies. She was respected for her persistence to succeed in an environment where it was rare for women of color to climb the corporate ladder. As she famously said, “I never operated with a complex—as a woman, as a black woman, as a black— but instead, as a person in business.”

(Image Source: https://www.blackenterprise.com)



Her courage and ambition was soon rewarded when she opened the E.G. Bowman Company in Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood and catapulted it into the mainstream of the American economy. Procope was celebrated as the first female of BLACK ENTERPRISE's “BE 100 list”, and received several honorary doctorates from a range of universities. In addition, her successful real estate brokerage firm, located on Wall Street in 1979, made her the first minority-owned insurance brokerage firm.

(Image Source: https://www.blackenterprise.com)



Encouraged by her late husband, Procope received her broker's license in order to learn the business and insure his properties. She utilized this opportunity to launch a business devoted to homeowner and auto insurance policies, and furthermore, expanded her focus on real estate rehabilitation and development. Her success was recognized by Ebony as “New York's Lady Builder — the First Negro Woman to Build Homes in New York State”, and proved to insurance companies that Bed-Stuy had financially stable middle-class families.

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