Ernesta Gertrude Procope was an American investment banker and insurance executive who was the head of the largest insurance agency run by a Black woman. Ernesta Gertrude Forster was born on Feb. 9, 1923, in Brooklyn and was raised in Bedford-Stuyvesant to immigrants from the West Indies. As a child, she played the piano and performed once at Carnegie Hall. She graduated from the High School of Music and Art.