Our Team
Sean Watson
Managing Partner
Sean Watson has spent two decades working with leaders and organizations rising to the defining challenges of our time, across politics, policy, technology, and capital. After a stint on Barack Obama's 2008 Presidential campaign, he led regional and national coalition and communications campaigns for organizations including The Pew Charitable Trusts on issues from clean energy to public lands to education. He went on to advise C-suite executives from Airbus, P&G, Wells Fargo, Coca-Cola, and dozens of other Global 500 companies through Singularity University and XPRIZE on leading through technological transformation, and co-founded Questify, a gamified social impact platform. Throughout, he kept arriving at the same insight: real change happens through cross-sector collaboration, not siloed action.
Sean is a tri-citizen of the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada, and a 2:28 marathoner. He is a founding member of the Stimson Center's Loomis Innovation Council, and holds a BA from Wesleyan University and a Master's in International Business and Policy from Georgetown University.
Kristie Cole
Managing Partner
Kristie has spent fifteen years at the intersection of growth strategy, capital formation, and institutional relationships: working in senior leadership roles at global humanitarian organizations and leading academic institutions including UNICEF USA, Georgetown's Walsh School of Foreign Service, American University's School of International Service, and The Wharton School. Her work spans large-scale fundraising, senior leadership advisory, crisis response, and fringe diplomacy in complex international environments.
She is a Top 50 “Global Game Changer” and an avid international traveler. Kristie has a BA from American University and a Masters in International Business & Policy from Georgetown University.
Sofia Arnold
Chief of Staff
Sofia Arnold is the Chief of Staff at Somerset, where she supports strategic leadership, drives organizational priorities, and advances partnerships across the social impact and philanthropic sectors. Previously, Sofia held frontline fundraising roles at UNICEF USA and Upwardly Global, and served as a Global Health Fellow at The Access Challenge, where she built expertise in health partnerships and program strategy.
Sofia has a BA in International Relations and Spanish from Boston University, and she recently graduated with distinction from New York University’s Center for Global Affairs with an MS in International Development and Humanitarian Assistance, specializing in sustainable development and innovative financing for global health.