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Throughout the initial chapters of the publication Authentic, author the author issues a provocation: everyday injunctions to “be yourself” or “present your real identity in the workplace” are not benevolent calls for individuality – they can be pitfalls. This initial publication – a blend of recollections, investigation, cultural critique and conversations – seeks to unmask how businesses co-opt identity, shifting the burden of organizational transformation on to employees who are already vulnerable.

Professional Experience and Broader Context

The driving force for the book lies partially in the author’s professional path: different positions across business retail, startups and in international development, filtered through her background as a woman of color with a disability. The conflicting stance that the author encounters – a back-and-forth between expressing one’s identity and aiming for security – is the core of her work.

It emerges at a period of collective fatigue with institutional platitudes across the US and beyond, as backlash to diversity and inclusion efforts grow, and numerous companies are scaling back the very structures that previously offered progress and development. The author steps into that arena to argue that backing away from corporate authenticity talk – that is, the organizational speech that minimizes personal identity as a grouping of appearances, quirks and interests, leaving workers concerned with managing how they are viewed rather than how they are treated – is not a solution; we must instead reinterpret it on our personal terms.

Minority Staff and the Display of Persona

By means of colorful examples and conversations, the author demonstrates how employees from minority groups – individuals of color, LGBTQ+ individuals, female employees, employees with disabilities – learn early on to modulate which identity will “fit in”. A vulnerability becomes a disadvantage and people overcompensate by striving to seem acceptable. The effort of “presenting your true self” becomes a reflective surface on which various types of anticipations are placed: emotional work, sharing personal information and ongoing display of appreciation. According to Burey, employees are requested to expose ourselves – but absent the defenses or the trust to survive what comes out.

According to the author, we are asked to reveal ourselves – but without the safeguards or the confidence to survive what comes out.’

Case Study: Jason’s Experience

She illustrates this phenomenon through the narrative of Jason, a hearing-impaired staff member who decided to inform his colleagues about the culture of the deaf community and communication practices. His willingness to talk about his life – a behavior of candor the organization often praises as “genuineness” – temporarily made everyday communications more manageable. However, Burey points out, that improvement was fragile. When staff turnover wiped out the informal knowledge he had established, the environment of accessibility vanished. “All the information went away with the staff,” he comments exhaustedly. What remained was the exhaustion of having to start over, of being held accountable for an company’s developmental journey. In Burey’s view, this illustrates to be requested to expose oneself absent defenses: to face exposure in a structure that praises your honesty but fails to formalize it into procedure. Authenticity becomes a snare when companies rely on individual self-disclosure rather than organizational responsibility.

Literary Method and Idea of Resistance

Burey’s writing is simultaneously clear and poetic. She marries intellectual rigor with a manner of connection: an invitation for audience to lean in, to interrogate, to dissent. In Burey’s opinion, workplace opposition is not loud rebellion but principled refusal – the practice of resisting conformity in settings that expect gratitude for basic acceptance. To oppose, according to her view, is to question the stories companies narrate about justice and belonging, and to refuse involvement in customs that sustain unfairness. It could involve naming bias in a gathering, opting out of unpaid “diversity” labor, or defining borders around how much of oneself is provided to the organization. Opposition, she suggests, is an assertion of personal dignity in spaces that often reward obedience. It constitutes a practice of honesty rather than rebellion, a way of asserting that a person’s dignity is not based on corporate endorsement.

Reclaiming Authenticity

She also refuses brittle binaries. Authentic does not simply discard “genuineness” entirely: instead, she urges its redefinition. For Burey, sincerity is not the unrestricted expression of personality that corporate culture often celebrates, but a more intentional correspondence between personal beliefs and one’s actions – a principle that resists alteration by corporate expectations. Instead of considering genuineness as a requirement to overshare or conform to sterilized models of transparency, Burey advises readers to keep the parts of it grounded in truth-telling, individual consciousness and principled vision. In her view, the aim is not to abandon genuineness but to shift it – to transfer it from the corporate display practices and toward relationships and workplaces where trust, justice and accountability make {