The visible minority population of the Greater Toronto Area as a whole is noticeably underrepresented in leadership roles in the corporate, public, education and non-profit sectors, according to a new study released on Thursday.

The report said that visible minorities account for 49.5 per cent of the GTA's overall population, but they account for just 14 per cent of the leadership ranks.

City of Toronto public agencies were found to have the best results, with visible minorities represented in 33 per cent of leadership roles, said the Ryerson University survey of 3,348 leaders.

As well, the report found that just under 22 per cent of organizations had 20 per cent or more visible minorities — one in five — in leadership roles.

But the study also found that more than half of the organizations surveyed had no visible minorities on their boards or in any leadership positions. The leadership ranks of the corporate sector included only four per cent of visible minorities.

"It's not that anybody is deliberately excluding minorities from leadership roles, it's that the standard practices in many organizations are informal and not transparent," Wendy Cukier, one of study's authors, told CBC News.

"The good news is that we're moving in the right direction and improved results are within reach," said Ratna Omidvar, one of the chairs of the study known as DiverseCity.

The report — produced for the second year in a row — urged organizations to use a variety of approaches including studying what their real numbers are and providing diversity training.

"There is a huge opportunity for organizations to improve," Cukier said.