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Throughout the initial chapters of the book Authentic, speaker the author raises a critical point: everyday directives to “bring your true self” or “present your real identity in the workplace” are not harmless encouragements for individuality – they can be pitfalls. This initial publication – a blend of recollections, research, cultural critique and conversations – seeks to unmask how organizations take over individual identity, transferring the burden of institutional change on to staff members who are already vulnerable.

Career Path and Wider Environment

The impetus for the publication originates in part in Burey’s own career trajectory: multiple jobs across retail corporations, emerging businesses and in global development, viewed through her background as a Black disabled woman. The two-fold position that Burey faces – a push and pull between asserting oneself and aiming for security – is the driving force of Authentic.

It arrives at a moment of collective fatigue with organizational empty phrases across America and other regions, as resistance to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs grow, and many organizations are reducing the very structures that earlier assured progress and development. Burey enters that arena to assert that backing away from authenticity rhetoric – specifically, the business jargon that minimizes personal identity as a set of surface traits, quirks and interests, keeping workers focused on handling how they are seen rather than how they are treated – is not an effective response; instead, we need to reframe it on our individual conditions.

Underrepresented Employees and the Display of Persona

Via detailed stories and discussions, the author demonstrates how underrepresented staff – people of color, LGBTQ+ individuals, women workers, employees with disabilities – learn early on to modulate which persona will “be acceptable”. A sensitive point becomes a drawback and people compensate excessively by striving to seem palatable. The practice of “bringing your full self” becomes a reflective surface on which various types of anticipations are placed: affective duties, sharing personal information and ongoing display of gratitude. As the author states, workers are told to reveal ourselves – but absent the safeguards or the reliance to withstand what arises.

As Burey explains, workers are told to expose ourselves – but without the protections or the trust to endure what arises.’

Case Study: An Employee’s Journey

Burey demonstrates this phenomenon through the narrative of an employee, a employee with hearing loss who decided to teach his team members about the culture of the deaf community and interaction standards. His readiness to talk about his life – a behavior of candor the organization often commends as “authenticity” – briefly made daily interactions more manageable. Yet, the author reveals, that improvement was precarious. When personnel shifts erased the casual awareness Jason had built, the atmosphere of inclusion dissolved with it. “All the information went away with the staff,” he comments exhaustedly. What stayed was the fatigue of needing to begin again, of being made responsible for an company’s developmental journey. In Burey’s view, this is what it means to be told to expose oneself without protection: to endanger oneself in a system that applauds your honesty but refuses to formalize it into policy. Genuineness becomes a snare when institutions rely on individual self-disclosure rather than organizational responsibility.

Literary Method and Concept of Dissent

Her literary style is simultaneously clear and expressive. She blends scholarly depth with a style of solidarity: a call for followers to lean in, to challenge, to disagree. For Burey, workplace opposition is not overt defiance but ethical rejection – the effort of resisting conformity in workplaces that require thankfulness for mere inclusion. To resist, according to her view, is to interrogate the narratives organizations narrate about equity and inclusion, and to reject involvement in practices that maintain inequity. It could involve identifying prejudice in a discussion, opting out of voluntary “diversity” labor, or setting boundaries around how much of one’s identity is provided to the organization. Resistance, the author proposes, is an affirmation of self-respect in settings that typically encourage obedience. It represents a practice of principle rather than rebellion, a approach of maintaining that a person’s dignity is not based on corporate endorsement.

Redefining Genuineness

She also refuses rigid dichotomies. Authentic avoids just toss out “authenticity” wholesale: rather, she calls for its reclamation. In Burey’s view, genuineness is not the unrestricted expression of character that corporate culture frequently praises, but a more deliberate alignment between personal beliefs and one’s actions – a principle that rejects manipulation by institutional demands. Instead of viewing sincerity as a mandate to disclose excessively or adapt to sterilized models of transparency, Burey urges audience to preserve the parts of it rooted in sincerity, personal insight and moral understanding. According to Burey, the goal is not to abandon genuineness but to shift it – to move it out of the corporate display practices and into connections and organizations where confidence, equity and responsibility make {