🔗 Share this article

Within the opening pages of the book Authentic, speaker Jodi-Ann Burey poses a challenge: typical advice to “be yourself” or “show up completely genuine at work” are not benevolent calls for personal expression – they can be pitfalls. Burey’s debut book – a combination of memoir, investigation, cultural critique and interviews – seeks to unmask how organizations co-opt identity, transferring the responsibility of corporate reform on to individual workers who are already vulnerable.

Personal Journey and Broader Context

The motivation for the work stems partly in Burey’s own career trajectory: various roles across retail corporations, startups and in international development, filtered through her background as a Black disabled woman. The conflicting stance that Burey faces – a push and pull between standing up for oneself and seeking protection – is the core of Authentic.

It emerges at a time of collective fatigue with institutional platitudes across the US and beyond, as backlash to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs increase, and many organizations are reducing the very systems that earlier assured progress and development. Burey enters that terrain to contend that withdrawing from the language of authenticity – namely, the organizational speech that reduces individuality as a collection of aesthetics, idiosyncrasies and hobbies, leaving workers preoccupied with handling how they are viewed rather than how they are handled – is not the answer; instead, we need to reinterpret it on our own terms.

Underrepresented Employees and the Display of Persona

Through detailed stories and interviews, Burey illustrates how employees from minority groups – individuals of color, LGBTQ+ people, women workers, people with disabilities – quickly realize to adjust which self will “fit in”. A weakness becomes a disadvantage and people compensate excessively by striving to seem acceptable. The practice of “showing your complete identity” becomes a reflective surface on which all manner of expectations are placed: affective duties, revealing details and continuous act of thankfulness. According to Burey, employees are requested to expose ourselves – but lacking the safeguards or the trust to survive what arises.

‘In Burey’s words, employees are requested to share our identities – but absent the defenses or the trust to endure what emerges.’

Real-Life Example: The Story of Jason

Burey demonstrates this situation through the story of a worker, a deaf employee who chose to educate his co-workers about deaf culture and communication norms. His readiness to discuss his background – a gesture of openness the workplace often commends as “sincerity” – temporarily made daily interactions easier. Yet, the author reveals, that advancement was precarious. After personnel shifts eliminated the casual awareness the employee had developed, the atmosphere of inclusion disappeared. “All of that knowledge went away with the staff,” he comments exhaustedly. What stayed was the fatigue of being forced to restart, of being held accountable for an company’s developmental journey. In Burey’s view, this illustrates to be asked to expose oneself without protection: to face exposure in a structure that applauds your openness but fails to institutionalize it into procedure. Sincerity becomes a snare when organizations count on individual self-disclosure rather than structural accountability.

Literary Method and Idea of Resistance

Burey’s writing is simultaneously lucid and expressive. She combines intellectual rigor with a tone of solidarity: an invitation for audience to participate, to challenge, to oppose. For Burey, workplace opposition is not overt defiance but ethical rejection – the practice of resisting conformity in environments that demand gratitude for basic acceptance. To resist, from her perspective, is to challenge the narratives organizations describe about fairness and inclusion, and to refuse engagement in customs that sustain unfairness. It could involve naming bias in a discussion, withdrawing of uncompensated “diversity” effort, or establishing limits around how much of one’s personal life is made available to the company. Resistance, she suggests, is an declaration of personal dignity in settings that often reward compliance. It is a discipline of honesty rather than opposition, a method of insisting that a person’s dignity is not based on institutional approval.

Reclaiming Authenticity

She also refuses rigid dichotomies. The book avoids just eliminate “authenticity” wholesale: on the contrary, she advocates for its redefinition. According to the author, authenticity is not simply the unrestricted expression of individuality that corporate culture often celebrates, but a more thoughtful harmony between personal beliefs and individual deeds – a principle that rejects manipulation by corporate expectations. As opposed to treating genuineness as a requirement to disclose excessively or adapt to sanitized ideals of transparency, Burey advises audience to preserve the aspects of it grounded in honesty, self-awareness and principled vision. According to Burey, the objective is not to give up on sincerity but to shift it – to move it out of the boardroom’s performative rituals and into interactions and organizations where confidence, equity and answerability make {