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Within the beginning sections of the book Authentic, speaker Jodi-Ann Burey issues a provocation: commonplace advice to “come as you are” or “bring your full, authentic self to work” are not harmless encouragements for individuality – they’re traps. Burey’s debut book – a blend of personal stories, research, cultural commentary and discussions – seeks to unmask how companies co-opt identity, shifting the responsibility of corporate reform on to employees who are frequently at risk.

Personal Journey and Wider Environment

The driving force for the work originates in part in the author’s professional path: multiple jobs across retail corporations, new companies and in global development, interpreted via her perspective as a Black disabled woman. The conflicting stance that the author encounters – a tension between expressing one’s identity and looking for safety – is the driving force of the book.

It emerges at a time of widespread exhaustion with institutional platitudes across the US and beyond, as resistance to DEI initiatives grow, and many organizations are reducing the very frameworks that once promised change and reform. Burey delves into that arena to assert that withdrawing from the language of authenticity – that is, the corporate language that trivializes identity as a collection of aesthetics, peculiarities and hobbies, forcing workers concerned with handling how they are perceived rather than how they are regarded – is not the answer; rather, we should redefine it on our personal terms.

Underrepresented Employees and the Display of Identity

Through vivid anecdotes and interviews, the author demonstrates how employees from minority groups – people of color, members of the LGBTQ+ community, women, people with disabilities – learn early on to calibrate which self will “fit in”. A vulnerability becomes a liability and people try too hard by working to appear agreeable. The practice of “bringing your full self” becomes a display surface on which all manner of assumptions are cast: emotional work, revealing details and continuous act of appreciation. As the author states, employees are requested to expose ourselves – but without the safeguards or the confidence 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 situation through the narrative of Jason, a deaf employee who chose to educate his colleagues about deaf culture and communication norms. His readiness to discuss his background – a behavior of candor the office often applauds as “genuineness” – briefly made daily interactions easier. But as Burey shows, that advancement was fragile. Once employee changes eliminated the casual awareness he had established, the environment of accessibility disappeared. “All of that knowledge departed with those employees,” he notes wearily. What stayed was the exhaustion of being forced to restart, of being held accountable for an institution’s learning curve. From the author’s perspective, this is what it means to be requested to expose oneself lacking safeguards: to endanger oneself in a framework that praises your transparency but declines to formalize it into policy. Authenticity becomes a trap when organizations rely on individual self-disclosure rather than institutional answerability.

Literary Method and Concept of Dissent

Burey’s writing is both clear and expressive. She combines intellectual rigor with a manner of solidarity: a call for readers to lean in, to challenge, to oppose. According to the author, dissent at work is not noisy protest but moral resistance – the act of opposing uniformity in environments that expect thankfulness for mere inclusion. To oppose, from her perspective, is to interrogate the narratives organizations narrate about fairness and inclusion, and to decline involvement in practices that sustain injustice. It might look like calling out discrimination in a discussion, withdrawing of uncompensated “equity” effort, or setting boundaries around how much of oneself is provided to the organization. Dissent, Burey indicates, is an assertion of individual worth in environments that frequently reward obedience. It represents a practice of honesty rather than opposition, a way of maintaining that a person’s dignity is not dependent on institutional approval.

Restoring Sincerity

Burey also rejects inflexible opposites. The book avoids just toss out “sincerity” completely: on the contrary, she advocates for its reclamation. According to the author, genuineness is far from the unfiltered performance of character that business environment frequently praises, but a more intentional alignment between personal beliefs and individual deeds – a principle that opposes distortion by organizational requirements. As opposed to viewing sincerity as a mandate to disclose excessively or adapt to sterilized models of candor, Burey advises followers to keep the elements of it grounded in truth-telling, individual consciousness and moral understanding. According to Burey, the aim is not to discard sincerity but to relocate it – to remove it from the boardroom’s performative rituals and into relationships and offices where reliance, fairness and answerability make {