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Within the beginning sections of the publication Authentic, speaker Jodi-Ann Burey poses a challenge: typical directives to “come as you are” or “present your real identity in the workplace” are not benevolent calls for self-expression – they can be pitfalls. Her first book – a combination of personal stories, research, societal analysis and discussions – attempts to expose how organizations co-opt identity, transferring the burden of institutional change on to individual workers who are already vulnerable.

Professional Experience and Wider Environment

The impetus for the work originates in part in Burey’s own career trajectory: various roles across business retail, emerging businesses and in international development, interpreted via her experience as a woman of color with a disability. The conflicting stance that the author encounters – a push and pull between asserting oneself and aiming for security – is the core of her work.

It arrives at a time of widespread exhaustion with organizational empty phrases across the United States and internationally, as backlash to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs mount, and various institutions are reducing the very systems that previously offered change and reform. The author steps into that arena to assert that backing away from the language of authenticity – namely, the corporate language that minimizes personal identity as a set of aesthetics, peculiarities and pastimes, keeping workers preoccupied with controlling how they are perceived rather than how they are treated – is not an effective response; we must instead reframe it on our own terms.

Underrepresented Employees and the Performance of Identity

By means of vivid anecdotes and interviews, the author demonstrates how marginalized workers – employees from diverse backgrounds, members of the LGBTQ+ community, female employees, employees with disabilities – learn early on to adjust which identity will “pass”. A weakness becomes a drawback and people try too hard by striving to seem agreeable. The act of “presenting your true self” becomes a display surface on which various types of anticipations are projected: emotional labor, sharing personal information and ongoing display of thankfulness. In Burey’s words, employees are requested to share our identities – but lacking the defenses or the reliance to withstand what emerges.

According to the author, we are asked to share our identities – but without the defenses or the trust to endure what emerges.’

Case Study: The Story of Jason

She illustrates this situation through the story of Jason, a employee with hearing loss who chose to educate his co-workers about the culture of the deaf community and interaction standards. His readiness to discuss his background – a behavior of candor the office often praises as “genuineness” – briefly made routine exchanges more manageable. But as Burey shows, that improvement was unstable. When personnel shifts erased the informal knowledge Jason had built, the culture of access dissolved with it. “All of that knowledge left with them,” he comments exhaustedly. What was left was the fatigue of needing to begin again, of being held accountable for an organization’s educational process. From the author’s perspective, this illustrates to be requested to share personally without protection: to face exposure in a structure that celebrates your transparency but refuses to institutionalize it into procedure. Genuineness becomes a pitfall when organizations rely on individual self-disclosure rather than organizational responsibility.

Writing Style and Idea of Resistance

Burey’s writing is both clear and lyrical. She marries academic thoroughness with a tone of connection: an invitation for followers to lean in, to challenge, to dissent. According to the author, workplace opposition is not noisy protest but principled refusal – the practice of opposing uniformity in workplaces that demand appreciation for mere inclusion. To dissent, from her perspective, is to challenge the stories institutions describe about fairness and inclusion, and to refuse involvement in practices that sustain unfairness. It could involve calling out discrimination in a gathering, opting out of voluntary “equity” labor, or establishing limits around how much of one’s identity is offered to the institution. Resistance, Burey indicates, is an affirmation of individual worth in settings that frequently encourage compliance. It represents a practice of integrity rather than defiance, a method of maintaining that one’s humanity is not dependent on corporate endorsement.

Restoring Sincerity

Burey also rejects brittle binaries. The book does not simply discard “genuineness” completely: instead, she calls for its redefinition. In Burey’s view, sincerity is far from the unfiltered performance of personality that organizational atmosphere typically applauds, but a more thoughtful correspondence between individual principles and individual deeds – a honesty that resists distortion by organizational requirements. Instead of treating sincerity as a directive to reveal too much or adjust to sterilized models of candor, Burey advises readers to preserve the parts of it grounded in truth-telling, self-awareness and ethical clarity. From her perspective, the aim is not to abandon genuineness but to relocate it – to transfer it from the executive theatrical customs and to interactions and offices where trust, fairness and accountability make {