A mission overlap 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 of June 28, 1969. The parade route, the date, the institution itself trace back to that night.
At the center of that night, and of the gay liberation movement that followed, 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, housing, healthcare, art, 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 across the country. The community Marsha built for 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, and in voice. Fifty-seven years after Marsha stood at the front of queer liberation, we're building the digital infrastructure for the community she built the public infrastructure for.
And we're inviting Rare Beauty into the moment with us — because we think your mission lines up with ours in a way that almost no other beauty brand's does.
Where Rare Beauty and She & HER say the same thing.
A She & HER lounge at Stage Fest.
The middle space, made cinematic.
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, and touch up between the two adrenaline zones.
The vanity moment is the natural fit for Rare Beauty:
- Couches, throw rugs, good lighting, fans, popsicles, shaded cover
- A vanity station — good lighting, mirror, full product lineup
- Setup window: 8–10am morning of, with storage at NYC Pride's office overnight if needed
- Influencers, VIPs, press, and performers pass through all day
This isn't a Pride sponsorship in the abstract. It's a beauty-as-belonging moment at the largest Pride in the world, on the day it matters most.
Three options. You self-select.
If this lands, where it could go.
The Stage Fest lounge is the entry point. If it lands well — culturally, commercially, on your team — we'd love to expand the relationship into:
A co-produced content series running through Pride season — sapphic mental health, the work of belonging, the beauty of being seen — featuring Rare Impact Fund's broader work alongside She & HER's community-building. The kind of work that earns press coverage that doesn't feel transactional.
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. The 2026 NYC moment is year zero of a multi-year footprint, and Rare Beauty could carry forward as a Founding Brand Partner across it.
This isn't a precondition. It's the next door if the first one 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 Rare Beauty in the next two weeks: a 30-minute call between Desi and the right person on your brand partnerships or marketing team. The goal is alignment on which option fits — and a clear path to lock the vanity placement by early June so we can build the lounge with Rare Beauty in mind.
Decision timing: ideally by early June so the lounge buildout (signage, vanity, product placement, co-branded content) can be locked with two weeks of runway before June 28.
To set the call: reply to desiree@sheandher.io or forward this to the right person on your team — either route works.