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Within the opening pages of the publication Authentic, author Burey poses a challenge: typical directives to “come as you are” or “present your real identity in the workplace” are not harmless encouragements for individuality – they often become snares. Her first book – a blend of personal stories, investigation, cultural commentary and discussions – seeks to unmask how businesses co-opt identity, shifting the responsibility of institutional change on to employees who are often marginalized.

Career Path and Larger Setting

The motivation for the publication stems partly in the author’s professional path: different positions across business retail, new companies and in global development, filtered through her perspective as a disabled Black female. The conflicting stance that Burey experiences – a tension between standing up for oneself and aiming for security – is the engine of the book.

It lands at a moment of collective fatigue with organizational empty phrases across the United States and internationally, as backlash to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs mount, and various institutions are scaling back the very systems that once promised progress and development. The author steps into that terrain to assert that backing away from the language of authenticity – specifically, the corporate language that reduces individuality as a set of aesthetics, quirks and hobbies, forcing workers focused on controlling how they are seen rather than how they are handled – is not the answer; we must instead reinterpret it on our individual conditions.

Marginalized Workers and the Act of Identity

Via colorful examples and discussions, Burey shows how employees from minority groups – people of color, LGBTQ+ individuals, women, employees with disabilities – learn early on to adjust which persona will “pass”. A sensitive point becomes a drawback and people try too hard by striving to seem palatable. The practice of “showing your complete identity” becomes a projection screen on which all manner of assumptions are cast: affective duties, sharing personal information and ongoing display of thankfulness. According to Burey, employees are requested to reveal ourselves – but without the protections or the confidence to survive what arises.

As Burey explains, we are asked to reveal ourselves – but without the defenses or the trust to withstand what emerges.’

Real-Life Example: Jason’s Experience

She illustrates this dynamic through the narrative of Jason, a deaf employee who took it upon himself to inform his team members about deaf culture and communication norms. His readiness to talk about his life – a gesture of transparency the organization often applauds as “genuineness” – temporarily made daily interactions more manageable. Yet, the author reveals, that improvement was unstable. After staff turnover erased the informal knowledge the employee had developed, the environment of accessibility dissolved with it. “Everything he taught departed with those employees,” he states tiredly. What stayed was the fatigue of needing to begin again, of having to take charge for an company’s developmental journey. According to Burey, this is what it means to be asked to reveal oneself lacking safeguards: to risk vulnerability in a framework that praises your openness but declines to formalize it into policy. Authenticity becomes a snare when companies count on individual self-disclosure rather than organizational responsibility.

Author’s Approach and Concept of Dissent

The author’s prose is both lucid and poetic. She marries scholarly depth with a tone of kinship: an offer for readers to lean in, to question, to oppose. For Burey, professional resistance is not loud rebellion but ethical rejection – the effort of opposing uniformity in environments that demand appreciation for basic acceptance. To dissent, according to her view, is to interrogate the stories organizations describe about justice and belonging, and to decline involvement in practices that perpetuate inequity. It might look like calling out discrimination in a meeting, opting out of voluntary “inclusion” work, or defining borders around how much of one’s personal life is offered to the organization. Dissent, Burey indicates, is an assertion of self-respect in environments that typically encourage obedience. It constitutes a discipline of honesty rather than opposition, a method of insisting that an individual’s worth is not conditional on corporate endorsement.

Restoring Sincerity

The author also avoids inflexible opposites. Her work does not merely toss out “genuineness” completely: instead, she advocates for its restoration. For Burey, genuineness is not the unfiltered performance of character that corporate culture frequently praises, but a more intentional alignment between one’s values and individual deeds – a principle that rejects manipulation by corporate expectations. Instead of considering genuineness as a requirement to overshare or adjust to sterilized models of openness, Burey advises readers to preserve the aspects of it grounded in sincerity, self-awareness and principled vision. According to Burey, the goal is not to discard authenticity but to relocate it – to transfer it from the boardroom’s performative rituals and toward interactions and organizations where trust, fairness and responsibility make {