A quiet partnership at NYC Pride 2026.
Why this year of Pride matters.
NYC Pride 2026 lands on June 28 — exactly 57 years to the day after the Stonewall Uprising. The parade traces back to that night.
At the center of that night was Marsha P. Johnson — a Black trans woman, drag performer, activist, co-founder of STAR. Marsha fought for queer people to exist in every facet of life: public space, healthcare, family, community. She is one of the people who made the queer existence we have today possible at all.
In 2026, the rights Marsha fought for are under attack again. Over 700 anti-trans bills are active in state legislatures this session. Local Prides are being cancelled or defunded. The community is being asked, again, to defend its right to exist publicly.
NYC Pride 2026 is being shaped as a remembering of Marsha. Not a memorial — a continuation.
She & HER — built by who Marsha built for.
I'm Desirée Mayon — founder and CEO of She & HER, a sapphic-led tech company building digital infrastructure for sapphic community. I spent 15 years in product and data at Google, Microsoft, and Cambridge before founding She & HER. We're a partner of NYC Pride for 2026.
She & HER is built by sapphic women, for sapphic women — explicitly inclusive of trans queer women, in name, in product, in voice. We're building the digital infrastructure for the community Marsha built the public infrastructure for.
And we want Ilia in the room — because the values overlap with sapphic community in a way that doesn't need to be loud about itself.
The brand voice is sapphic-coded before anyone names it.
A She & HER lounge at Stage Fest.
The middle space, made quiet.
The middle space between the influencer red carpet (Go Magazine doing interviews) and the Red Bull–sponsored backstage. The natural gathering point of the day — where everyone passes through to rest, recharge, touch up between the two adrenaline zones.
The lounge is built quieter than most Pride brand activations:
- Couches, throw rugs, good lighting, fans, popsicles, shaded cover
- A small, intentional vanity — Skin Tints, Multi-Sticks, lip oils, the actual essentials
- Setup window 8–10am morning of, with storage at NYC Pride's office overnight
- Influencers, VIPs, press, performers pass through all day looking for a moment of calm
The lounge isn't another spectacle. It's the space where people come down from the spectacle. Ilia fits naturally in that room.
Three options. You self-select.
For Ilia specifically, the *light* option may actually fit the brand voice better than the heavier ones — which is exactly why we're recommending it.
If this lands, where it could go.
The Stage Fest lounge is the entry point. If it lands well, we'd love to extend the relationship into a quieter editorial series on clean beauty, sapphic minimalism, and the work of getting ready honestly — the kind of content Ilia's audience already engages with, extended into She & HER's audience.
A 2027 extension — Disney Sapphic Day on National Lesbian Day 2027 is already confirmed for She & HER. UK Pride 2027 and Amsterdam Pride 2027 are also confirmed. Ilia as a Founding Brand Partner across the multi-year footprint is the next door if the first opens well.
Meet Desirée.
"Marsha P. Johnson built the public infrastructure for queer community. We're building the digital one."
Desirée Mayon is a Black queer technologist who spent 15 years building production systems at Google (Fuchsia & Privacy & Security), Microsoft (Xbox), and Cambridge University (SupTech Lab) — shipping ML models, running $80M+ business lines, and building regulated data systems for cross-institutional research.
She founded She & HER to take that operator rigor and apply it to digital infrastructure sapphic community has been missing: a platform built by sapphic women, for sapphic women, explicitly inclusive of trans queer women. In name, in product, in voice.
The full-circle thesis isn't a metaphor. She's the kind of person the work Marsha started in 1969 was meant to make possible — and now she's the one carrying it forward in the language Marsha couldn't have built in: code, data, platform infrastructure, brand voice.
The next conversation.
What we'd love from Ilia in the next two weeks: a 30-minute call between Desi and the right person on your brand partnerships team. The goal is alignment on which option fits — and a clear path to lock the lounge presence by early June.
Decision timing: ideally by early June for buildout runway.
To set the call: reply to desiree@sheandher.io or forward this to the right person on your team — either route works.