Insurance Broker
EP transformed her storefront insurance business into what was eventually the nation’s largest insurance agency owned by a Black woman, with headquarters on Wall Street.
FAMILY BACKGROUND
Neither of EP’s parents were born in the United States. Her father, born in Barbados, was a son of a notorious Barbadian buccaneer (pirate who died in the middle of the 19th century). Her father started as a postal worker, then a chief steward for the Cunard (cruise ships) lines and eventually owned real estate. Her mother was a homemaker, born in St. Lucia, in the British West Indies.
EP was born and raised in a large, East Coast city of the U.S.
CHILDHOOD
EP’s family had an old piano at home, which her mother played, leading to EP’s interest in music. EP became a talented pianist, performing in a recital at Carnegie Hall in New York City at age 13.
EDUCATION
EP graduated from the High School of Music and Art and enrolled in college, which she left after a year to marry and handle the insurance for her husband’s real estate business. She also studied at the Pohs Institute of Insurance.
CAREER PATH – LEARNING HOW TO TAKE OVER A BUSINESS
After EP’s husband died, she took over what had been his business and a year later, founded a new business in her own name. She began ‘brokering” policies (placing her customers’ insurance policies with licensed insurance companies) for local small businesses and homeowners.
Decades later, EP’s brokerage had grown to handle accounts for major commercial, institutional, and nonprofit business clients like PepsiCo and other Fortune 500 corporations as well as the New York City Housing Authority.
CHALLENGE – ACCUSATION OF SELF-DEALING / CONFLICT OF INTEREST
EP’s positive personal and business reputations received negative publicity when she, along with 17 other members of a university’s Board of Trustees were removed by a state agency over failing to properly oversee spending by the university’s president. As chairwoman of the trustees, EP was also accused of conflict of interest for handling the university’s insurance through her brokerage. She denied wrong-doing, contending that her insurance brokerage provided free consulting to the university and saved it money by providing superior service. She was never charged with any criminal misconduct.
Editor’s note – An old saying: “No good deed goes unpunished” applies here. EP donated her time and experience to serve as a trustee for a university. But she opened herself to criticism by doing business with (earning profits from) that university. Potential ways to avoid unreasonable criticism include: (1) avoiding doing business with the charitable / non-profit organization you are otherwise serving for free; or (2) demonstrate to the relevant individuals within the organization you are serving, that your business is either fully donating its services or significantly discounting the cost of its business services. (3) Before finalizing any relationship between the charitable organization and your business, fully disclose all the details of the proposed relationship to the leadership of the organization.
CAREER SATISFACTION
As EP’s insurance business expanded, she fought to provide African Americans and people in poor areas with access to insurance. When major insurers were reluctant to underwrite policies in certain city areas which were largely populated by Black homeowners and renters, EP hired limousines to ferry insurance executives to visit those neighborhoods. EP said: “They didn’t know that many of the city’s supposed poor areas had substantial, middle-class homeowners – Blacks and Whites – who needed, deserved and could afford insurance coverage.”
When civil disorder in the late 1960s prompted insurers to deny selling insurance policies to homeowners in certain city areas where Black and Hispanic people predominated, EP helped persuade the Governor (Nelson Rockefeller) and the state legislature, to ban ‘redlining’ – the wholesale denial of insurance coverage by neighborhood, instead of analyzing the risks for each individual to be insured.
EP also pressed the state to establish its “Fair Access to Insurance Requirements” plan for homeowners in high-risk areas, who would otherwise have been denied standard insurance policies. It became a model for similar programs in other states.
Though removed from one university’s Board of Trustees, EP remained a trustee of another (Ivy League) university and should be remembered exclusively for her business skills and community advocacy, not for one disputed incident.
