2023 Grand Marshals

Marcel Pardo Ariza (b. Bogotá, Colombia) is a trans visual artist, educator, and curator who explores the relationship between queer and trans kinship through constructed photographs, site-specific installations, and public programming. Their work is rooted in close dialogue and collaboration with trans, non-binary, and queer friends and peers, most of whom are performers, artists, educators, policymakers, and community organizers. They recently curated Juanita: 30 Years of MORE! at the San Francisco Arts Commission Galleries and their installation I Am Very Lucky, Very Lucky To Be Trans, featuring 33 trans, intersex, and gender-nonconforming leaders working in the Bay Area is showing at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Their practice celebrates collective care, intergenerational connection while building sustainable trans futures, and archiving trans history.

L.Frank has spent her life remembering what it means to truly belong, to be Indigenous to a place. In her work as a a Tongva/Ajachemen & Rarámuri artist, writer, tribal scholar, teacher, cartoonist, Indigenous language, and Two Spirit activist, she has forged new pathways and connections for Indigenous and Two Spirit communities in California and around the globe, to remember the ways they each intimately and essentially belong to their Homelands. L.Frank lives and works in Santa Rosa. In June 2019, Frank was awarded the Alexis Arquette Family Foundation | LA Pride 2 Spirits Activist Award.

Mason J. is a Mission-born, Fillmore-raised, Lambda Literary-awarded, Blaxican-Indigenous Mexican, and Sephardic Jewish writer, photographer, historian, and bisexual Two-Spirit transmasc, conjuring in Yelamu on occupied Ohlone Land. While Mason has worn many hats in the past, including foster youth, gay jock, SAG/AFTRA actor, care worker, program manager, and educator; they now work as Wordkeeper, disability justice organizer, housing advocate, public health nerd, night tlifer, and interim Executive Director of RADAR Productions. In addition to serving on the GLBT Historical Society and Dandelion advisory Boards, they have collaborated with VONA Voices, Still Here SF, Berkeley Arts Center, Transgender Cultural District, LYRIC SF, Rainbow Community Center, Project OpenHouse, Ruth Asawa School of the Arts, UC Berkeley, UCSF, Cornell University, SF City & County, @lgbt_history, and was SFPL's James C. Hormel LGBTQIA Center fellow during 2017-2019.

JM Jaffe serves as the Executive Director for the newly independent Lyon-Martin Community Health Services in San Francisco. They are a non-binary, trans masculine, trans health content expert. JM has 13 years of experience working to expand trans programming at Lyon-Martin, and 8 years in consulting at TransLine, a national provider clinical support tool and through their provider training and technical assistance project, Trans Health Consulting. They have assisted over 1000 patients in accessing gender affirming surgery, and work to appeal unlawful surgery denials, obtaining Medi-Cal coverage for many gender affirming surgeries and interventions for the first time, laying the groundwork for the streamlined processes now in place and replicated across the state and country. JM has over a decade of experience in policy advocacy, most recently leading the Save Lyon-Martin campaign, the National LGBTQIA+ Primary Care Alliance, and participating on the Trans Advisory Committee for San Francisco's Office of Trans Initiatives.

Stephen Torres has called San Francisco home since 1999. Through working in the industry, he found community among the thousands of workers who support this great city’s historic and diverse nightlife. Like many queer people of color who arrive in San Francisco, working in nightlife was an accessible, sustainable way to establish and provide for himself in this city that is so close to his heart. Torres has organized industry events for networking and support, hosted events creating safe spaces of LGBTQ+ Latin-e,a,x,o inclusion, worked as a journalist, and served on the Board of the Harvey Milk LGBTQ Democrats with a focus on preserving legacy queer spaces. Torres serves as Executive Co-Chair of the Castro LGBTQ Cultural District Advisory Board and as a San Francisco Entertainment Commissioner where he has tied together many of these focuses. He was recognized by Supervisor Rafael Mandelman and Senator Scott Wiener in 2021 for his COVID-19 response work within the District.