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Throughout the opening pages of the publication Authentic, speaker Jodi-Ann Burey raises a critical point: commonplace injunctions to “be yourself” or “show up completely genuine at work” are far from well-meaning invitations for individuality – they often become snares. Burey’s debut book – a mix of memoir, studies, cultural commentary and discussions – aims to reveal how companies co-opt identity, moving the responsibility of organizational transformation on to employees who are often marginalized.

Career Path and Broader Context

The driving force for the publication lies partially in the author’s professional path: different positions across corporate retail, emerging businesses and in international development, filtered through her background as a Black disabled woman. The two-fold position that Burey experiences – a tension between standing up for oneself and seeking protection – is the core of Authentic.

It emerges at a period of widespread exhaustion with organizational empty phrases across the US and beyond, as resistance to DEI initiatives mount, and various institutions are scaling back the very structures that previously offered transformation and improvement. The author steps into that terrain to argue that retreating from the language of authenticity – specifically, the corporate language that trivializes identity as a collection of surface traits, quirks and pastimes, keeping workers preoccupied with controlling how they are perceived rather than how they are regarded – is not an effective response; rather, we should redefine it on our personal terms.

Marginalized Workers and the Display of Persona

By means of detailed stories and conversations, Burey shows how employees from minority groups – people of color, LGBTQ+ people, women workers, people with disabilities – soon understand to modulate which persona will “be acceptable”. A vulnerability becomes a drawback and people try too hard by striving to seem palatable. The act of “bringing your full self” becomes a display surface on which numerous kinds of assumptions are projected: emotional work, sharing personal information and continuous act of thankfulness. As the author states, we are asked to reveal ourselves – but lacking the protections or the confidence to survive what arises.

According to the author, workers are told to share our identities – but absent the protections or the reliance to endure what emerges.’

Real-Life Example: The Story of Jason

The author shows this dynamic through the narrative of an employee, a hearing-impaired staff member who decided to inform his colleagues about deaf culture and interaction standards. His eagerness to discuss his background – an act of transparency the organization often commends as “genuineness” – for a short time made everyday communications more manageable. Yet, the author reveals, that advancement was unstable. When employee changes wiped out the casual awareness Jason had built, the culture of access dissolved with it. “Everything he taught left with them,” he comments exhaustedly. What was left was the fatigue of needing to begin again, of having to take charge for an institution’s learning curve. From the author’s perspective, this illustrates to be told to expose oneself absent defenses: to risk vulnerability in a framework that applauds your transparency but declines to institutionalize it into procedure. Genuineness becomes a snare when institutions rely on employee revelation rather than organizational responsibility.

Literary Method and Notion of Opposition

Burey’s writing is at once clear and lyrical. She marries scholarly depth with a style of connection: a call for readers to participate, to interrogate, to dissent. In Burey’s opinion, dissent at work is not overt defiance but principled refusal – the practice of opposing uniformity in environments that require thankfulness for basic acceptance. To oppose, in her framing, is to question the accounts institutions tell about justice and inclusion, and to reject participation in rituals that perpetuate inequity. It might look like naming bias in a gathering, withdrawing of unpaid “equity” work, or setting boundaries around how much of one’s identity is provided to the institution. Resistance, the author proposes, is an assertion of individual worth in settings that frequently praise obedience. It constitutes a habit of principle rather than rebellion, a method of maintaining that a person’s dignity is not dependent on institutional approval.

Redefining Genuineness

The author also avoids inflexible opposites. The book avoids just discard “genuineness” wholesale: on the contrary, she advocates for its restoration. For Burey, genuineness is far from the raw display of individuality that business environment frequently praises, but a more intentional correspondence between individual principles and individual deeds – a honesty that rejects alteration by institutional demands. Rather than treating genuineness as a requirement to disclose excessively or adapt to sanitized ideals of candor, Burey advises followers to preserve the aspects of it rooted in sincerity, personal insight and moral understanding. From her perspective, the goal is not to give up on authenticity but to shift it – to remove it from the boardroom’s performative rituals and toward relationships and organizations where trust, fairness and accountability make {