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Throughout the beginning sections of Authentic: The Myth of Bringing Your Full Self to Work, author Jodi-Ann Burey issues a provocation: everyday directives to “bring your true self” or “show up completely genuine at work” are far from well-meaning invitations for self-expression – they’re traps. This initial publication – a mix of memoir, research, cultural commentary and conversations – aims to reveal how organizations take over individual identity, shifting the weight of institutional change on to individual workers who are already vulnerable.

Personal Journey and Wider Environment

The impetus for the work stems partly in Burey’s personal work history: multiple jobs across business retail, startups and in international development, filtered through her experience as a disabled Black female. The conflicting stance that Burey experiences – a tension between standing up for oneself and looking for safety – is the core of her work.

It emerges at a moment of widespread exhaustion with organizational empty phrases across America and other regions, as opposition to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs increase, and various institutions are scaling back the very frameworks that once promised transformation and improvement. The author steps into that terrain to contend that backing away from the language of authenticity – that is, the corporate language that trivializes identity as a set of aesthetics, idiosyncrasies and pastimes, keeping workers focused on handling how they are perceived rather than how they are handled – is not a solution; rather, we should redefine it on our personal terms.

Marginalized Workers and the Act of Identity

Via detailed stories and conversations, the author demonstrates how underrepresented staff – individuals of color, LGBTQ+ individuals, women, people with disabilities – learn early on to calibrate which identity will “pass”. A vulnerability becomes a liability and people compensate excessively by working to appear agreeable. The practice of “presenting your true self” becomes a reflective surface on which various types of anticipations are cast: emotional work, revealing details and continuous act of appreciation. As the author states, employees are requested to reveal ourselves – but without the protections or the reliance to withstand what emerges.

As Burey explains, we are asked to share our identities – but lacking the protections or the trust to endure what arises.’

Illustrative Story: Jason’s Experience

Burey demonstrates this phenomenon through the story of Jason, a hearing-impaired staff member who chose to educate his co-workers about deaf community norms and communication practices. His willingness to share his experience – a gesture of candor the workplace often praises as “genuineness” – for a short time made daily interactions smoother. But as Burey shows, that progress was unstable. After staff turnover erased the informal knowledge Jason had built, the atmosphere of inclusion dissolved with it. “All of that knowledge left with them,” he notes wearily. What was left was the exhaustion of having to start over, of being held accountable for an institution’s learning curve. In Burey’s view, this is what it means to be requested to share personally lacking safeguards: to face exposure in a structure that praises your honesty but fails to formalize it into procedure. Authenticity becomes a snare when institutions depend on personal sharing rather than institutional answerability.

Writing Style and Idea of Resistance

Her literary style is both lucid and expressive. She blends academic thoroughness with a style of connection: a call for followers to engage, to interrogate, to disagree. In Burey’s opinion, workplace opposition is not overt defiance but moral resistance – the practice of opposing uniformity in environments that require gratitude for simple belonging. To dissent, in her framing, is to question the stories organizations describe about fairness and inclusion, and to refuse involvement in practices that sustain injustice. It may appear as calling out discrimination in a gathering, withdrawing of unpaid “inclusion” labor, or defining borders around how much of oneself is provided to the company. Dissent, Burey indicates, is an assertion of personal dignity in environments that typically praise compliance. It is a habit of principle rather than rebellion, a method of maintaining that one’s humanity is not dependent on corporate endorsement.

Redefining Genuineness

She also refuses rigid dichotomies. Her work does not merely eliminate “authenticity” entirely: instead, she urges its restoration. According to the author, authenticity is not simply the raw display of personality that organizational atmosphere typically applauds, but a more thoughtful alignment between personal beliefs and individual deeds – a honesty that opposes distortion by institutional demands. Instead of considering authenticity as a mandate to overshare or adjust to sterilized models of candor, Burey urges audience to maintain the elements of it based on honesty, individual consciousness and ethical clarity. From her perspective, the aim is not to give up on sincerity but to shift it – to transfer it from the boardroom’s performative rituals and into interactions and organizations where confidence, equity and responsibility make {