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What the average American CEO looks like

A composite image that reveals barriers in business

We made a composite image of corporate leaders. The result highlights a lack of diversity at the very top.

What does the average American CEO look like?

We sought to find out by making a composite image of the top chief executives in the United States. We took the top 100 companies on this year’s Fortune 500 list, and layered pictures of each CEO over another until we had the "average" face.

Looking at the faces of these corporate leaders, one thing is abundantly clear – the vast majority are white men.

With that in mind, we asked: how far down this list of 100 do you have to go before you reach the first woman, or the first person of colour? Take a look at the video above to find out.

Composite image by Soumitra Agarwal. Video editing by Bowen Li. Research by Yinxue Liao and Kat Sud.

Editor's note: In the video, Indra Nooyi is incorrectly identified as Indra Noori. The correct spelling is 'Nooyi'.