Trixie Mattel Honored for Entrepreneurial Success as California Rainbow Chamber Marks 10th Anniversary of LGBTQ Mega Mixer

LAPost/Los Angeles, CA (October 21, 2026) — By Richard Ren/LAPost

The California Rainbow Chamber celebrated a decade of connecting LGBTQ-owned businesses with customers, corporate partners and civic leaders Wednesday evening, bringing approximately 300 business owners, community advocates and public officials to the 10th LGBTQ Networking Mega Mixer at the Sofitel Los Angeles at Beverly Hills.

The event honored entertainer and entrepreneur Trixie Mattel for building a multifaceted business portfolio spanning cosmetics, hospitality, music and television. But the evening’s larger message extended beyond individual achievement: as Los Angeles prepares for the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games and other major international events, LGBTQ-owned businesses need meaningful access to the contracts and economic opportunities those events generate.

Marquita Thomas: Community connections must translate into business opportunities

Opening the evening, California Rainbow Chamber founding President and CEO Marquita Thomas welcomed attendees and emphasized the economic power of supporting businesses within the LGBTQ community.

“Community economics is very, very powerful,” Thomas said. Keeping money circulating within the community, she explained, helps individuals build wealth, create jobs, support philanthropy and sustain local businesses.

She encouraged attendees to approach the mixer not only as an opportunity to find customers, but also to become customers, make referrals and establish strategic partnerships.

“Don’t just look for business this evening,” Thomas said. “Be ready to give business as well.”

The chamber’s mission, she explained, goes beyond networking events. It provides connections to capital, technical assistance and opportunities to compete for government and corporate contracts. The organization also works to help LGBTQ-owned businesses become more visible to procurement officials and major institutions.

Thomas highlighted the chamber’s efforts to connect members with business opportunities related to the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics and Paralympic Games, the Super Bowl and FIFA events. Companies in the event-services sector, for example, may be positioned to provide lighting, food and beverages, portable sanitation and other services required for large-scale productions.

Yet those opportunities can be difficult for small businesses to access without the right certifications, supplier registrations, financial resources and industry relationships.

In an interview with LAPost, Thomas said one of her immediate priorities is to increase the number of certified LGBTQ-owned businesses and ensure more of them are included in corporate and public-sector supplier databases.

She also wants to see greater LGBTQ participation in high-value sectors such as construction and infrastructure, where businesses can face significant barriers involving bonding, insurance and access to capital.

“Over the next decade, I want those businesses to grow into employers with a seat wherever economic decisions are made,” Thomas said. Her goal is for an LGBTQ-owned company winning a major contract to become ordinary news rather than a rare milestone.

The chamber’s membership plans start at $150, Thomas said, describing membership as a way for entrepreneurs to become part of a network that can connect them with prospective clients and larger contracting opportunities.

She also thanked the Sofitel, which has hosted seven of the chamber’s 10 Mega Mixers, along with the event’s promotional partners and community organizations.

Mayor Karen Bass pledges support for LGBTQ businesses ahead of LA28

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass followed Thomas with remarks recognizing the chamber’s 10th anniversary and its role in helping LGBTQ entrepreneurs participate in the city’s economy.

Bass congratulated Thomas on her leadership and reaffirmed her longstanding support for the LGBTQ community.

“I am a proud ally of the LGBTQ community for decades,” Bass said. She added that Los Angeles wants businesses across its diverse communities to thrive, a goal that requires targeted outreach and a specific commitment to groups that might otherwise be overlooked.

Bass said the city wants LGBTQ-owned businesses to benefit financially, economically and socially from the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Her administration began preparing local businesses for the Games three years ago, she said, including annual summits that brought together approximately 1,000 businesses.

The city’s vision, Bass explained, is “the games for all.” Beyond sporting competitions, Los Angeles hopes to stage festivals, poetry readings, exhibitions and other activities throughout its neighborhoods, allowing visitors to experience the breadth of the city and its communities.

Bass also pledged to work with the chamber to help ensure that LGBTQ-owned businesses are included when contracts and procurement opportunities become available.

In a separate interview with LAPost, the mayor reiterated that the chamber is important to Los Angeles and said she wanted to make sure its members share in the economic benefits of the upcoming Games.

Her remarks underscored a central concern raised by the chamber: public commitments to inclusion must lead to concrete opportunities for businesses to compete for contracts.

With the Olympics approaching, Thomas said, the challenge is to ensure LGBTQ-owned companies are prepared to participate in the procurement process rather than being left outside the major spending opportunities.

Trixie Mattel recognized for turning a drag persona into a business empire

Thomas then introduced the evening’s honoree, Trixie Mattel, describing her as an entrepreneur whose success demonstrates how an authentic creative identity can develop into a diversified business enterprise.

Mattel, who won RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars Season 3, is an entertainer, recording artist and business owner whose ventures span cosmetics, hospitality, music, television and digital media.

She founded Trixie Cosmetics and continues to serve as its CEO. She also opened the Trixie Motel in Palm Springs with her partner, David Silver, turning the property’s renovation into a reality television series.

Her business interests include an ownership stake in This Is It!, Wisconsin’s oldest gay bar, which she helped sustain at a time when many small venues have struggled to remain open.

Beyond those ventures, Mattel has built a substantial audience through music releases, podcasts, YouTube programming, television appearances and other entertainment projects. She co-hosts The Bald and the Beautiful podcast with fellow drag performer Katya and has collaborated with consumer brands on products including a Trixie doll.

Thomas said Mattel’s achievements illustrate how businesses rooted in entertainment, beauty, hospitality and the arts can generate revenue and create jobs.

The award also carries a broader message for younger LGBTQ people, Thomas said: entrepreneurs should not have to choose between being authentic and being successful.

Thomas said she had attempted to bring Mattel to the event in both 2024 and 2025, but the entertainer’s demanding schedule had prevented her from attending.

This year, the chamber finally welcomed her as its entrepreneurship honoree.

Mattel: Entrepreneurship requires the audacity to claim space

Accepting the award, Mattel joked that entrepreneurs running multiple businesses rarely have much free time. Work, she observed, continues well beyond conventional business hours.

She then shifted to the challenges LGBTQ people face in establishing themselves professionally and publicly.

“I feel like gay people our whole lives we spend fighting for space,” Mattel said. “We’re stifling, we’re pushing ourselves down. We’re waiting for straight people in the room to tell us when it’s okay to say something, be something, walk the way you walk, think anything.”

For Mattel, entrepreneurship offers a way to challenge those limitations by creating something distinctive and insisting that it deserves a place in the marketplace.

“Everything about opening a business is about having the audacity to push through and say, this is my area, and this is my lemonade I’m selling,” she said.

She then delivered the line that captured the spirit of the evening: “We’re all selling lemonade on this side of the street. And for me, I will always prefer if that lemonade is pink.”

The audience responded with laughter and applause.

Mattel also spoke about the emotional reactions of visitors to the Trixie Motel, saying some guests arrive moved by the experience and the realization that such a distinctive place exists.

She compared the property’s success to the familiar idea from Field of Dreams that if something is built, people will come.

“It’s very Field of Dreams — if you build it, they will come,” Mattel said. “They really will. And they’ll come and come.”

Her remarks connected the personal freedom of creative expression with the practical demands of entrepreneurship: building a recognizable brand, creating something people want and sustaining the confidence to pursue an unconventional vision.

For the chamber, Mattel’s career offers an example of how LGBTQ entrepreneurs can transform their identities, talents and community connections into businesses with lasting commercial value.

Sofitel partnership reflects a decade of community engagement

The evening also highlighted the role of business partners in sustaining the chamber’s work.

Darian James, the Sofitel Los Angeles at Beverly Hills’ director of catering and conference services, welcomed attendees and described the hotel’s ongoing partnership with the organization.

James said the hotel was pleased to host business owners from across Los Angeles County and to demonstrate its commitment to the community.

The property offers event spaces for conferences, holiday parties and other gatherings, he said. Recent renovations included the hotel’s front drive, lobby, patio and bar, with additional guest-room renovations anticipated ahead of the 2028 Olympics.

The chamber’s Mega Mixer has become a recurring venue for entrepreneurs to exchange business cards, meet potential partners and develop relationships that can continue after the event.

Wednesday’s gathering included open networking, an icebreaker activity designed to encourage attendees to meet others with shared interests, prize drawings and the presentation of the entrepreneurship award.

Thomas also recognized the promotional partners that helped bring the community together, including LGBTQ media and organizations such as the Los Angeles Blade and LA Pride.

As the California Rainbow Chamber looks toward its next decade, the organization hopes to expand its membership, strengthen the pipeline of certified LGBTQ-owned suppliers and help more entrepreneurs compete for major corporate and public-sector contracts.

The evening’s celebration of Mattel’s accomplishments offered an example of what a distinctive brand and sustained entrepreneurial effort can achieve. The chamber’s next challenge is to help more businesses turn their own ideas into sustainable enterprises — and ensure that LGBTQ entrepreneurs have a meaningful place in the economic future of Los Angeles.