Building bridges: Stonewall Community Foundation's Maryse Pearce on identity and community

More than 20 years ago, a closeted Queens-born teenager decided to stop by the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center in Manhattan for a pamphlet after school. As she stood nervously outside, her heart was pounding out of her chest. Glancing around to ensure nobody she knew was there, she dashed into the Center, grabbed the pamphlet and immediately ran out.

“It was just so scary to even admit to myself that I was not straight,” says Maryse Pearce, that same youth. “One of the hardest parts of coming out was the internalized queerphobia that I had in a world that tells me that not being straight is not okay.”

After years of struggling with her identity, Pearce now identifies as queer — she is finally out and proud, thanks to the queer friends she met and the power she found through communities.

“I believe that who we are as people is allowed to change,” Pearce reflects on her journey in Out’s latest episode of “Coming Out, Me.” “Seeing other people able to embrace who they were, and be proud of who they were, helped me find that sense of pride in my own identity.”

Pearce channels the lessons she has learned from struggling to come out, into her role as the Program Director at Stonewall Community Foundation. For more than five years, Pearce has been connecting other LGBTQ+ organizations in New York City and beyond with necessary resources they need to thrive, including funding, donations, or volunteers…According to Pearce, Stonewall Community Foundation raises money and funds more than one hundred LGBTQ+ organizations each year, fostering safe and inclusive spaces for LGBTQ+ youth.

“I like to think of myself as a matchmaker,” says Pearce. “It's so important to connect with people on a level of fundamental understanding and humanity in order to bring them along as allies or even as members of our community.”

Pearce was most proud of her foundation’s response to the death of Nex Benedict, a nonbinary 16-year-old who died after being brutally attacked by older students in the girls’ bathroom at Owasso High School in Tulsa County, Okla. earlier this year. Following the tragedy, Pearce’s foundation contacted Oklahomans for Equality (OKEQ), who at the time was overloaded with processing their own grief, holding vigils in Benedict’s honor and providing support for the local queer community. Stonewall Community Foundation made a $10,000 grant to OKEQ to help the nonprofit keep its door open when the community takes time to heal.

“This is one of the most important things I got to do this year,” Pearce says with conviction of the grant.

In addition to grants, Stonewall Community Foundation currently offers three scholarships to provide LGBTQ+ youth in need with access to education, including the “Little Bird Scholarship for Undocumented LGBTQI Immigrants,” funded by Anna Rosenthal. According to Pearce, Rosenthal was a student at Columbia University surviving on leftovers and working multiple jobs to cover her tuition until she received a scholarship from the foundation, allowing her to finish her degree. In 2020, Rosenthal learned that the original donors of that scholarship ended their support for the scholarship and decided to step in to fund the scholarship, awarding recipients $18,000 for up to two years of study.

“That just exemplifies what our work is about,” says Pearce. “It is about removing those barriers that would have kept Anna from thriving and from doing amazing work, to now being able to set her up to be able to give back so generously to her community.”

For Pearce, her mission at Stonewall Community Foundation is clear: to create a world where LGBTQ+ youth can live authentically, without fear and restriction.

“I just want to create a world where queer and trans people have everything that they need to not just survive, but thrive,” says Pearce. “I want them to live their best lives, whether that's making art, practicing law, starting families or just going to school. I want us all to succeed.”

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