NYC Pride is on a roll in spotlighting out transgender women to lead the 2026 Pride March.
On April 7, the nonprofit organization that produces the march named actress Dominique Jackson of FX's Pose as its first of five grand marshals. A week later, Peppermint, the trailblazing actress who was the first out trans contestant on RuPaul’s Drag Race, was revealed as its second grand marshal.
Then on April 21, NYC Pride announced its third grand marshal is an out trans woman whose face and name are not nearly as well known, but whose voice is familiar to every straphanger who's braved the New York City subway since 2009: Bernie Wagenblast.
"You may not recognize this voice, but I hope you recognize this. "The next downtown 2 train is approaching the station. Please stand away from the platform edge.'"
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"It's wonderful," Wagenblast tells Out. "It's been a little over three years since I socially transitioned. But it's been just one amazing thing or surprising thing after another. And this is just the latest in that long list of things that I never anticipated, never would have expected."
Wagenblast, 69, says she marched in the 2025 NYC Pride March alongside members of her union, SAG-AFTRA, and attended as one of the 2.5 million observers in 2024.
Aside from subway announcements, the transportation journalist writes and publishes a daily newsletter, manages a website, produces podcasts, and is a voice actor. Wagenblast's coming out in 2023 not only made headlines, it also earned her accolades — including a 2025 Clio Award for In Transit, the role of announcer at the inauguration of Mayor Zohran Mamdani, sharing the stage at Lincoln Center with Judy Collins in March, and landing a voice-over gig in collaboration with Broadway legend Lin-Manuel Miranda on his new star-studded album, Warriors.
Bernie and Lin-Manuel
"One day, almost two years ago, the phone rings, and I look at the caller ID and it says ‘Toronto, Canada’. And usually if I don't recognize the number, I'll just let it go. But I usually don't get spam calls from Canada. So I picked it up, and the gentleman on the other end of the phone said, 'I'm a sound engineer. We're working on an album, and we'd like to use your voice on it,’” she recalls. He told Wagenblast she'd have to sign a non-disclosure agreement to learn more, and so she did.
"I'd done a few other records where I was a voice. One was a pop song in China. And I figured this was going to be some obscure thing that would never make any kind of a splash," she adds. "He calls me back and says, 'This is an album that Lin-Manuel Miranda is working on.'"
Miranda's album Warriors is a reimagining of the 1979 film, The Warriors. The movie pits a Coney Island street gang against rivals and transit cops as they make their way from the Bronx to their home turf to defend themselves from false accusations. It turns out Miranda is a fan of both that film and Wagenblast herself.
"'That's the first thing,'" the engineer calling from Canada said on that phone call. "'Second thing, Lin is a big fan of yours.'"
"Oh my God, Lin-Manuel Miranda knows who I am? Wow!" she says. "I was just blown away."
A few weeks later, Wagenblast got to meet her fan at Atlantic Records, recording her lines for Mirada's album in a voice-over studio. "Lin was on the other side of the glass, giving me direction. And I was recording the various lines that are used on the Warriors album. So, that was the first and the biggest thing for me. I couldn't believe that I had a chance to do that."
In September 2025, Wagenblast was contacted by Dylan Mulvaney to record lines for her off-Broadway show, The Least Problematic Woman in the World. "That was my off-Broadway debut, and then there's one more thing I just learned about."
Unfortunately, details of that next big project are under wraps until next month, so Wagenblast couldn't spill the tea just yet. But the honor of being grand marshal is foremost in her mind right now, as well as the privilege she enjoys as a 69-year-old white, late-transitioner.
Wagenblast on Privilege
"I realize I have a tremendous amount of privilege being white, the fact that I transitioned as late in life as I did; I was 66 when I socially transitioned. So, most of my career, I was seen and treated as a straight cis white guy," she tells Out. "I also have tremendous privilege because of where I live, in New Jersey, in the New York metro area, [where] there is far more acceptance and support and legal protections that I have here than I would if I were living in Texas or Idaho or Kansas. So, I acknowledge all of those things.”
"The second thing that I say to people is, I'm also old enough, having grown up in the 1960s, to remember the civil rights movement," she continues. "Now as an adult, I look back at the Black Americans who were involved with the civil rights movement — both the leaders, people like Dr. King, but also ordinary people whose names have been lost to time, [and] we don't know them as leaders. But they were there on the front lines. …. There were arrests and beatings and dogs. And unfortunately, many were killed because of what they were doing. So, I look to them as a source of inspiration and a source of learning from what they did. And I think there are lessons that we can learn as the trans community from what they experienced."
"For All of Us"
The theme of NYC Pride in 2026 is "For All of Us," and in a recent Instagram video, Wagenblast explains what that means to her.
"’For All of Us’ means not just all of us who are in the LGBTQ community, but for all of us around the country, wherever you may be. If you're watching this in Kansas, Idaho, Texas, Florida, we want to be there for you."
One thing Wagenblast won't do, she says, is flee the country, something a growing number of LGBTQ+ Americans have done, as The Advocate has reported.
"I do not want to leave the country because that would just be another way of me enjoying my privilege. Because there are people who cannot leave the country. They don't have the resources. They don't have the wherewithal to pack up and get out of the United States. So, that is part of it. I don't want to abandon those people. I want to be able to stay here and fight for them and provide an example," she explains. "I'm going to do whatever I can to not allow the government or any individual or whoever it may be, to take away the joy that I feel as a trans person. That trans joy is something that I'm going to cherish and hold on to despite … what other people may want to do."
Wagenblast is often recruited to tell her story and says she delights in opportunities to speak publicly about her experience, especially to children who are transgender.
"When I've been in front of audiences that have trans kids in it, they see this old lady standing up there talking, but I want to remind them that I was a trans kid. I was in their shoes. It was a much different time, but I was a kid who was seen as a boy who desperately knew that they were a girl, but I couldn't do anything about it. And I found ways to deal with that disappointment, that frustration of not being able to be who I really was. And I hope no trans kid has to wait until they're 66 years old, but I hope that maybe that provides some encouragement to them that it is possible, even with a delay and even with the government."
In her conversation with Out, Wagenblast quotes Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who himself was quoting abolitionist minister Theodore Parker: ""The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.’ "That is one of those lessons that, yes, we are going through a tough time, but when I look back at the 60s and the 70s, when I was growing up, I couldn't even find any kind of support systems at all.”
"Change is possible. Change, positive change, will happen," she concludes. "I know it doesn't seem like it right now. Those of us who are older, who can remember less fortunate times, have seen how things can change. And, we're seeing a down-curve right now, but I believe there will be an up-curve in terms of acceptance, support, and rights at some point in the future."
NYC Pride will announce its fourth grand marshal on Tuesday, April 28, and its fifth and final grand marshal on May 5.
