A Partnership Proposal · WorldPride Amsterdam 2026

She & HER × Zoku

Live. Work. Socialize. Pride — all under one rooftop.
Jul 25 – Aug 8
WorldPride Amsterdam
UNITY
2026 Theme
4–6
Team Members On the Ground
2 Summers
2026 WorldPride + 2027 Pride
Who We Are

The sapphic side of WorldPride, organized.

She & HER is a community platform built for and centering the sapphic (wlw) community — founded and led by sapphic CEO Desirée Mayon, a FAANG-trained technologist. We come to Amsterdam not as tourists but as partners: we're in direct partnership with Pride Amsterdam for WorldPride and with Netherlands Black Pride, and we're already confirmed to return for Amsterdam Pride 2027.

Pride Amsterdam · WorldPride 2026 Netherlands Black Pride NYC Pride 2026 Amsterdam Pride 2027 — Confirmed
Desirée Yvonne Mayon, CEO and founder of She & HER
Meet the Founder

Desirée Yvonne Mayon

CEO and founder, She & HER

“The community has always been there. The front door just hadn't been built.”

Desirée grew up in Sunnyside, Houston — raised on porches, in hair salons, and around kitchen tables, where community wasn't a feature, it was the air. Coming into her sapphic identity as an adult, she went looking for that same air and found the door missing.

She spent 15+ years in applied machine learning — Google, Microsoft, Etsy, Nordstrom, the University of Cambridge; MS in Bioinformatics, Texas A&M — then left FAANG to build the door herself.

She & HER is what she's building: a community platform for and centering sapphic women, on a deliberate order — community first, then self, then someone. Find your human. WorldPride is that thesis in person, and Zoku is the rooftop she wants it under.

Backed by NVIDIA Inception AWS Activate Google for Startups
Why Zoku

You built the space we already work like.

"Amazing things happen when people come together" — that's your line, and it's our whole product thesis. We're a small team collective that lives, works, and socializes in one motion: partner activations by day, community by night. The Zoku Lofts as home-office-away-from-home, Fika at 15:30, Wednesday Community Dinner, Kindred Spirits at golden hour — it's not a hotel choice, it's a values match. We want Zoku as our WorldPride HQ, and we want to show our community what doing Pride under one rooftop looks like.

Psst… we'd be the guests who actually show up to the Community Dinner — and bring the most interesting new people to your table.
The Moment

Two weeks the whole world watches Amsterdam.

July 25
Pride Walk & Pride Park
WorldPride opens — Dam to Vondelpark. Our team arrives and settles into home base.
July 31 – Aug 1
Street Parties & Canal Parade
The signature weekend. We're on the ground with our partner orgs — and back at Zoku each night.
Pride Week (date flexible)
She & HER Gathering at Zoku
An intimate sapphic community evening at Kindred Spirits or in the Social Spaces — co-hosted with your Community Manager and Sidekicks. Come for the view, stay for the food, leave with a few new friends.
Aug 5 – 8
Human Rights Conference & WorldPride Village
The closing stretch at Museumplein — where the global conversation happens.
✦ Tap any moment to expand
The Pride Economy

Pride is one of the largest recurring gatherings on Earth.

The world's biggest Prides draw crowds in the millions — and host cities see the numbers multiply in WorldPride years.

WorldPride NYC · 2019Stonewall 50
5M
São Paulo Priderecord years
3–5M
WorldPride Madrid · 2017
3.5M
Toronto Pride · 2024
3.1M
NYC Pride · 2024
2.5M
WorldPride Sydney · 2023
1M+
WorldPride Amsterdam · 2026She & HER projection
1–1.75M

The fastest-compounding corner of it

Black queer communities have gathered since long before anyone kept count — the counted numbers are simply catching up. And when they do, they compound: in behavioral-economics terms, identity-centered gatherings generate the strongest social-proof loops in the category. Every attendee is a node in a community, not a solo ticket. Two markers of that curve:

350 → 25,000 · 71×

UK Black Pride, 2005 → today. Now the largest LGBTQ+ celebration for people of colour in Europe — and She & HER partners directly with its Dutch counterpart, Netherlands Black Pride.

650 → 40,000 · 61×

AfroTech, 2016 → 2025. The world's largest Black tech conference — where She & HER is a confirmed 2026 Field Partner.

The Amsterdam projection (She & HER analysis): host cities historically see WorldPride multiply their regular Pride attendance ~1.75–2.5× (Madrid: 2M → 3.5M in 2017; NYC: ~2M → 5M in 2019). Amsterdam's Canal Parade already draws 500K+ in a regular year, and organizers expect ~500K international visitors on top of local crowds. We model total WorldPride Amsterdam attendance at 1–1.75M across the two weeks — with the Black queer and sapphic programming tracks growing faster than the event average. Zoku sits at the center of that surge.
The Reach

Why this helps Zoku, in numbers.

Zoku will fill rooms during WorldPride regardless. What a partnership buys is position — with a high-spend audience segment hospitality brands consistently miss.

0
K
International visitors expected at WorldPride Amsterdam — the largest LGBTQ+ event in the world in 2026
0
$B
Global LGBTQ+ tourism market in 2026 — hotels take the single biggest share (~38%)
0
%
More spent per activity by LGBTQ+ travelers vs. other travelers — and they stay longer
0
M
C$ economic impact of WorldPride Toronto — the precedent for what a host city (and its hotels) capture

Our side of the ledger

0
K
On the She & HER waitlist — within two months of saying we exist, zero paid acquisition
0
K
Monthly impressions across owned channels
0
 Prides
Confirmed activations: NYC 2026, UK + Amsterdam 2027 — plus earned media on Fox 26 Houston
Nov 2026
Beta launch — WorldPride content becomes launch-season content our whole community sees

The company we keep

Our amplification doesn't stop at owned channels — it moves through a collaborator and ambassador network built for exactly this kind of moment.

CHANI 1M+
Queer-led astrology app (Chani Nicholas + Sonya Passi) — 1M+ monthly readers in its community
Cristian Dennis 1M+
Brand ambassador — 1M+ Instagram followers across beauty, fashion & entertainment
Wilhelmina Models Est. 1967
One of the world's premier model agencies — represented talent inside our creative network
She and Her Society HTX + NOLA
Experiential & merch partner with on-the-ground reach across two of the South's queer capitals
Fox 26 Houston 2.8M HH
Earned broadcast media in America's #6 TV market (2.8M households) — return slate booked
AfroTech 2026 40K+
Confirmed Field Partner — the world's largest Black tech conference (40K+ attendees, Houston, Nov 2026)
Where She & HER fits: the sapphic traveler is the under-marketed half of that spend. A Zoku partnership reaches her through three amplifying channels at once — She & HER owned media and member community, the Pride Amsterdam WorldPride partner network, and Netherlands Black Pride's community reach — then compounds in 2027 when we return for Amsterdam Pride. One partnership, two summers, three networks.
The Partnership

A simple exchange, in both directions.

What we're asking

  • Zoku Lofts for 4–6 team members across the WorldPride run (July 25 – August 8), comped or at partner rate
  • One evening at Kindred Spirits or in the Social Spaces for an intimate She & HER community gathering during Pride week
  • Your Community Manager as our named contact to co-shape the gathering

What Zoku gets

  • Zoku showcased as the way to do WorldPride — content across She & HER channels and our partner network
  • A sapphic community activation inside your space — new faces at the community dinner table, on brand with Better Together
  • Visibility alongside Pride Amsterdam and Netherlands Black Pride partnerships
  • A returning partner for Amsterdam Pride 2027 — a relationship, not a one-off booking
The Arc

Two summers, one story.

'26

WorldPride: prove the fit

Zoku as home base and gathering place. Content, community, and a working model for how a values-led team does Pride in Amsterdam.

→
'27

Amsterdam Pride: come home

We're already confirmed for 2027. Year two means an earlier runway, a bigger co-designed activation, and Zoku as our standing Amsterdam address.