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Within the initial chapters of the publication Authentic, speaker Jodi-Ann Burey poses a challenge: typical directives to “bring your true self” or “show up completely genuine at work” are not harmless encouragements for personal expression – they can be pitfalls. Burey’s debut book – a mix of memoir, research, cultural commentary and conversations – seeks to unmask how companies take over individual identity, moving the weight of corporate reform on to staff members who are frequently at risk.

Personal Journey and Wider Environment

The impetus for the work stems partly in Burey’s personal work history: various roles across retail corporations, new companies and in worldwide progress, filtered through her experience as a disabled Black female. The dual posture that the author encounters – a back-and-forth between expressing one’s identity and seeking protection – is the engine of the book.

It lands at a time of collective fatigue with institutional platitudes across America and other regions, as backlash to DEI initiatives grow, and numerous companies are cutting back the very systems that earlier assured transformation and improvement. Burey delves into that arena to contend that backing away from authenticity rhetoric – that is, the business jargon that minimizes personal identity as a collection of aesthetics, quirks and hobbies, leaving workers focused on handling how they are viewed rather than how they are regarded – is not an effective response; we must instead reinterpret it on our individual conditions.

Marginalized Workers and the Act of Persona

By means of detailed stories and discussions, Burey illustrates how underrepresented staff – individuals of color, LGBTQ+ individuals, women, people with disabilities – soon understand to modulate which self will “pass”. A weakness becomes a disadvantage and people overcompensate by striving to seem palatable. The effort of “showing your complete identity” becomes a display surface on which various types of expectations are cast: emotional work, sharing personal information and constant performance of appreciation. As the author states, we are asked to expose ourselves – but lacking the protections or the reliance to withstand what arises.

‘In Burey’s words, employees are requested to share our identities – but without the defenses or the confidence to withstand what emerges.’

Case Study: The Story of Jason

Burey demonstrates this dynamic through the account of a worker, a employee with hearing loss who took it upon himself to teach his team members about deaf community norms and communication practices. His readiness to discuss his background – a gesture of candor the workplace often commends as “sincerity” – temporarily made routine exchanges more manageable. However, Burey points out, that advancement was precarious. After staff turnover wiped out the informal knowledge he had established, the environment of accessibility dissolved with it. “All the information left with them,” he comments exhaustedly. What remained was the fatigue of being forced to restart, of being held accountable for an organization’s educational process. According to Burey, this demonstrates to be requested to expose oneself without protection: to endanger oneself in a structure that praises your honesty but refuses to formalize it into policy. Genuineness becomes a trap when organizations rely on personal sharing rather than organizational responsibility.

Author’s Approach and Idea of Resistance

Burey’s writing is at once lucid and poetic. She combines intellectual rigor with a tone of kinship: an invitation for followers to lean in, to question, to oppose. For Burey, workplace opposition is not loud rebellion but principled refusal – the effort of resisting conformity in workplaces that require gratitude for basic acceptance. To resist, according to her view, is to challenge the accounts organizations describe about equity and acceptance, and to reject engagement in practices that maintain injustice. It could involve identifying prejudice in a meeting, opting out of uncompensated “equity” effort, or setting boundaries around how much of oneself is provided to the organization. Opposition, the author proposes, is an affirmation of personal dignity in settings that typically praise conformity. It represents a practice of integrity rather than defiance, a way of asserting that a person’s dignity is not based on organizational acceptance.

Reclaiming Authenticity

Burey also rejects brittle binaries. The book does not simply toss out “sincerity” completely: instead, she urges its reclamation. According to the author, sincerity is far from the unfiltered performance of individuality that corporate culture often celebrates, but a more intentional harmony between personal beliefs and one’s actions – a honesty that resists manipulation by organizational requirements. Rather than viewing genuineness as a mandate to disclose excessively or conform to cleansed standards of transparency, the author encourages followers to preserve the parts of it grounded in honesty, personal insight and principled vision. From her perspective, the goal is not to abandon authenticity but to shift it – to move it out of the boardroom’s performative rituals and to connections and offices where trust, fairness and accountability make {