Deborah Bach--Standing on the last of 19 floats in São Paulo’s LGBT Pride Parade, Victoria Medeiros looked around at the sea of people gathered in the Brazilian city for one of the biggest gay pride celebrations in the world and marveled at the scene.

“We could feel the energy of everyone jumping around, and you could see smiles everywhere,” she says of the June 18 event, which organizers estimated drew 3 million people. “You could see that everyone was there celebrating and feeling happy. It was awesome.”

Medeiros, a sales excellence manager for Microsoft, was among thousands of employees worldwide taking part in Microsoft-sponsored Pride events in 29 cities on five continents, the company’s biggest global Pride participation to date. Microsoft kicked off the global celebrations with a June 6 event in Redmond, Washington, followed by parades and other community events. Most U.S. events were held in June, designated as Pride month in 2000 by President Bill Clinton. Other cities are holding Pride events in July and August, with Taipei’s celebration in late October as the last of the Microsoft-sponsored events.

In Dublin, Ireland, Liam Mackessy joined the city’s Pride parade for the first time this year. An account manager for Bing Ads, Mackessy was usually out of town studying or working during Dublin’s previous Pride celebrations. He was living in France and keenly following the news in 2015, when Ireland became the first country in the world to legalize same-sex marriage by popular vote. Last June, Ireland elected its first openly gay prime minister.

Mackessy, who started working for Microsoft full time last July, helped organize the company’s participation in this year’s Dublin Pride Parade, held June 24. He rode on Microsoft’s float, handing out balloons as the parade wound its way through the city center. Seeing the crowd of about 30,000, Mackessy felt a palpable change in his predominantly Catholic homeland.

“The atmosphere was just electric,” he says. “It was absolutely fantastic. Going back even a couple of years, you wouldn’t have seen that many people at a Pride parade. I think Ireland has come a long way, and Dublin Pride is a real testament to that.”