Black women executives are underrepresented in line roles, and may face a harder path to CEO. We showed above that within our US and UK data sets overall representation of women on executive teams shows an apparent bias towards staff roles. Among our US sample, not only do women hold a disproportionately small share of line roles on executive teams, but women of color (including black, Latina and Asian women) hold an even smaller share (Exhibit 6). Exhibit 6 Representation of women of color on executive teams 1 Female executive roles by responsibility type and ethnic/cultural minority More black women executives in staff roles 65% of all female Share of line roles executives are in staff roles 35 7 10 13 69 1 65 Black Hispanic Asian White Other 15 6 6 71 2 Share of staff roles 1Sample includes 341 companies with 872 female executives SOURCE: McKinsey Analytics; company websites; McKinsey Diversity Matters database Line versus staff roles on executive teams tend to differ in their ability to propel individuals to the CEO position, with line roles the more likely incubators of future CEOs. In our US sample, black female executives specifically are more than twice as likely to be in staff roles than in line roles, and our sample denotes an absence of black female CEOs. Other US studies, including our recent Women in the Workplace 2017 report, have found that black women suffer a double burden of bias that keeps them from the uppermost levels of corporate leadership. Underrepresentation on executive teams in general, and in line roles in particular, could be an important piece of this story. Corporate leaders will need a more granular understanding of the dynamics across inherent and acquired diversity dimensions to address this opportunity fully. Delivering through Diversity Diversity and financial performance in 2017 16