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Within the beginning sections of the publication Authentic, speaker Jodi-Ann Burey raises a critical point: commonplace advice to “bring your true self” or “show up completely genuine at work” are not benevolent calls for self-expression – they often become snares. Burey’s debut book – a mix of personal stories, research, cultural commentary and discussions – aims to reveal how companies take over individual identity, shifting the responsibility of corporate reform on to employees who are often marginalized.

Professional Experience and Larger Setting

The driving force for the work originates in part in Burey’s own career trajectory: different positions across retail corporations, startups and in worldwide progress, viewed through her perspective as a disabled Black female. The dual posture that the author encounters – a push and pull between standing up for oneself and looking for safety – is the core of Authentic.

It lands at a period of general weariness with corporate clichés across the United States and internationally, as opposition to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs mount, and various institutions are scaling back the very systems that previously offered transformation and improvement. Burey enters that arena to assert that backing away from authenticity rhetoric – namely, the business jargon that minimizes personal identity as a grouping of aesthetics, peculiarities and hobbies, leaving workers concerned with handling how they are seen rather than how they are regarded – is not a solution; we must instead reframe it on our own terms.

Underrepresented Employees and the Act of Persona

Via vivid anecdotes and discussions, the author demonstrates how marginalized workers – individuals of color, LGBTQ+ people, women workers, disabled individuals – learn early on to adjust which self will “be acceptable”. A vulnerability becomes a drawback and people overcompensate by striving to seem acceptable. The practice of “presenting your true self” becomes a reflective surface on which all manner of anticipations are placed: affective duties, disclosure and continuous act of gratitude. In Burey’s words, we are asked to expose ourselves – but absent the protections or the confidence to endure what comes out.

As Burey explains, employees are requested to reveal ourselves – but without the protections or the trust to endure what emerges.’

Real-Life Example: The Story of Jason

The author shows this phenomenon through the account of a worker, a deaf employee who chose to teach his co-workers about deaf community norms and communication practices. His readiness to talk about his life – a gesture of candor the organization often praises as “authenticity” – for a short time made daily interactions easier. However, Burey points out, that improvement was unstable. Once employee changes eliminated the informal knowledge the employee had developed, the culture of access dissolved with it. “Everything he taught departed with those employees,” he comments exhaustedly. What was left was the fatigue of being forced to restart, of having to take charge for an company’s developmental journey. From the author’s perspective, this is what it means to be told to reveal oneself absent defenses: to endanger oneself in a structure that praises your openness but refuses to codify it into procedure. Genuineness becomes a pitfall when institutions rely on individual self-disclosure rather than structural accountability.

Writing Style and Concept of Dissent

Her literary style is simultaneously clear and expressive. She marries scholarly depth with a tone of solidarity: an offer for audience to engage, to challenge, to oppose. In Burey’s opinion, dissent at work is not overt defiance but ethical rejection – the act of opposing uniformity in settings that expect appreciation for simple belonging. To oppose, in her framing, is to challenge the stories institutions narrate about fairness and inclusion, and to refuse engagement in practices that maintain inequity. It might look like naming bias in a meeting, withdrawing of unpaid “diversity” effort, or setting boundaries around how much of oneself is made available to the company. Dissent, the author proposes, is an declaration of individual worth in spaces that typically encourage compliance. It is a habit of principle rather than rebellion, a way of asserting that an individual’s worth is not based on organizational acceptance.

Reclaiming Authenticity

She also refuses rigid dichotomies. The book does not simply eliminate “sincerity” wholesale: on the contrary, she advocates for its redefinition. For Burey, authenticity is not the unfiltered performance of personality that business environment frequently praises, but a more deliberate alignment between individual principles and individual deeds – a honesty that resists alteration by institutional demands. As opposed to considering genuineness as a directive to reveal too much or conform to cleansed standards of openness, Burey urges audience to keep the parts of it based on truth-telling, personal insight and principled vision. In her view, the goal is not to discard genuineness but to relocate it – to move it out of the boardroom’s performative rituals and toward interactions and workplaces where reliance, justice and responsibility make {