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In the beginning sections of the book Authentic, writer Jodi-Ann Burey raises a critical point: typical injunctions to “bring your true self” or “present your real identity in the workplace” are not benevolent calls for personal expression – they often become snares. Her first book – a combination of recollections, investigation, cultural commentary and conversations – aims to reveal how businesses co-opt identity, transferring the burden of corporate reform on to employees who are frequently at risk.

Career Path and Broader Context

The driving force for the publication originates in part in Burey’s own career trajectory: different positions across business retail, emerging businesses and in international development, viewed through her perspective as a Black disabled woman. The two-fold position that Burey faces – a push and pull between expressing one’s identity and looking for safety – is the core of Authentic.

It arrives at a time of widespread exhaustion with organizational empty phrases across the United States and internationally, as backlash to diversity and inclusion efforts grow, and numerous companies are scaling back the very systems that previously offered progress and development. Burey delves into that arena to assert that retreating from the language of authenticity – that is, the corporate language that trivializes identity as a collection of appearances, idiosyncrasies and pastimes, forcing workers concerned with handling how they are seen rather than how they are treated – is not a solution; rather, we should reframe it on our own terms.

Marginalized Workers and the Act of Self

Through detailed stories and conversations, Burey illustrates how employees from minority groups – people of color, LGBTQ+ people, women, people with disabilities – learn early on to modulate which identity will “be acceptable”. A sensitive point becomes a drawback and people try too hard by working to appear palatable. The practice of “presenting your true self” becomes a display surface on which numerous kinds of anticipations are projected: emotional work, sharing personal information and constant performance of thankfulness. According to Burey, workers are told to reveal ourselves – but without the safeguards or the trust to survive what arises.

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

Illustrative Story: The Story of Jason

She illustrates this phenomenon through the narrative of Jason, a hearing-impaired staff member who decided to inform his co-workers about deaf culture and communication practices. His willingness to share his experience – a behavior of openness the workplace often applauds as “genuineness” – briefly made routine exchanges smoother. Yet, the author reveals, that advancement was fragile. Once staff turnover wiped out the casual awareness he had established, the environment of accessibility dissolved with it. “Everything he taught left with them,” he states tiredly. What was left was the fatigue of having to start over, of being held accountable for an company’s developmental journey. From the author’s perspective, this illustrates to be asked to reveal oneself lacking safeguards: to risk vulnerability in a framework that celebrates your openness but fails to formalize it into regulation. Authenticity becomes a trap when companies depend on individual self-disclosure rather than structural accountability.

Author’s Approach and Concept of Dissent

Burey’s writing is at once understandable and poetic. She blends intellectual rigor with a manner of kinship: an offer for readers to lean in, to question, to dissent. In Burey’s opinion, professional resistance is not noisy protest but principled refusal – the act of rejecting sameness in environments that require thankfulness for basic acceptance. To dissent, according to her view, is to interrogate the stories companies describe about equity and belonging, and to refuse engagement in practices that sustain unfairness. It might look like identifying prejudice in a discussion, withdrawing of voluntary “equity” work, or establishing limits around how much of oneself is offered to the institution. Opposition, the author proposes, is an declaration of individual worth in spaces that often praise conformity. It is a discipline of principle rather than defiance, a method of maintaining that an individual’s worth is not dependent on institutional approval.

Restoring Sincerity

Burey also rejects brittle binaries. Authentic does not simply toss out “authenticity” completely: instead, she advocates for its restoration. For Burey, genuineness is far from the unrestricted expression of individuality that organizational atmosphere typically applauds, but a more deliberate alignment between one’s values and individual deeds – an integrity that opposes alteration by organizational requirements. As opposed to considering authenticity as a directive to disclose excessively or conform to sterilized models of openness, Burey urges readers to keep the elements of it based on sincerity, individual consciousness and principled vision. In her view, the goal is not to discard sincerity but to move it – to move it out of the boardroom’s performative rituals and to interactions and organizations where trust, fairness and responsibility make {