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Within the beginning sections of the book Authentic, author Burey poses a challenge: commonplace advice to “come as you are” or “show up completely genuine at work” are far from well-meaning invitations for self-expression – they can be pitfalls. Her first book – a mix of recollections, research, cultural commentary and discussions – attempts to expose how companies appropriate personal identity, shifting the responsibility of organizational transformation on to employees who are already vulnerable.

Professional Experience and Larger Setting

The driving force for the publication originates in part in Burey’s personal work history: various roles across retail corporations, startups and in international development, interpreted via her perspective as a woman of color with a disability. The dual posture that Burey faces – a back-and-forth between standing up for oneself and aiming for security – is the driving force of the book.

It lands at a moment of collective fatigue with institutional platitudes across the United States and internationally, as backlash to DEI initiatives grow, and various institutions are cutting back the very frameworks that earlier assured progress and development. Burey enters that landscape to argue that retreating from corporate authenticity talk – that is, the organizational speech that reduces individuality as a collection of appearances, idiosyncrasies and hobbies, forcing workers focused on handling how they are perceived rather than how they are regarded – is not a solution; we must instead reframe it on our personal terms.

Underrepresented Employees and the Performance of Persona

Through colorful examples and conversations, the author demonstrates how employees from minority groups – employees from diverse backgrounds, LGBTQ+ individuals, female employees, people with disabilities – soon understand to modulate which self will “be acceptable”. A sensitive point becomes a disadvantage and people compensate excessively by striving to seem agreeable. The practice of “showing your complete identity” becomes a display surface on which numerous kinds of assumptions are placed: emotional work, disclosure and ongoing display of gratitude. According to Burey, we are asked to share our identities – but without the safeguards or the trust to withstand what comes out.

According to the author, workers are told to expose ourselves – but absent the protections or the trust to endure what emerges.’

Real-Life Example: An Employee’s Journey

The author shows this phenomenon through the story of a worker, a employee with hearing loss who decided to inform his team members about the culture of the deaf community and interaction standards. His willingness to discuss his background – a behavior of candor the organization often commends as “authenticity” – temporarily made daily interactions easier. Yet, the author reveals, that progress was precarious. Once employee changes eliminated the unofficial understanding the employee had developed, the atmosphere of inclusion vanished. “All of that knowledge left with them,” he states tiredly. What stayed was the weariness of needing to begin again, of being made responsible for an organization’s educational process. From the author’s perspective, this illustrates to be told to reveal oneself absent defenses: to risk vulnerability in a structure that praises your transparency but declines to codify it into regulation. Sincerity becomes a snare when organizations depend on individual self-disclosure rather than organizational responsibility.

Writing Style and Notion of Opposition

Burey’s writing is both lucid and expressive. She blends intellectual rigor with a style of kinship: an offer for followers to lean in, to interrogate, to disagree. According to the author, professional resistance is not noisy protest but moral resistance – the act of opposing uniformity in settings that expect gratitude for basic acceptance. To resist, according to her view, is to interrogate the narratives companies tell about equity and belonging, and to reject involvement in rituals that maintain unfairness. It might look like naming bias in a discussion, opting out of unpaid “equity” effort, or defining borders around how much of one’s personal life is made available to the company. Opposition, Burey indicates, is an assertion of personal dignity in spaces that frequently reward obedience. It constitutes a discipline of honesty rather than defiance, a way of asserting that one’s humanity is not conditional on organizational acceptance.

Redefining Genuineness

The author also avoids inflexible opposites. Authentic does not simply toss out “sincerity” completely: on the contrary, she advocates for its restoration. For Burey, sincerity is far from the unfiltered performance of character that corporate culture typically applauds, but a more deliberate alignment between one’s values and individual deeds – a principle that rejects manipulation by organizational requirements. Instead of treating genuineness as a requirement to disclose excessively or adjust to sterilized models of candor, the author encourages followers to maintain the parts of it rooted in truth-telling, self-awareness and principled vision. In her view, the objective is not to discard authenticity but to move it – to move it out of the executive theatrical customs and into relationships and workplaces where confidence, equity and accountability make {