Isa Watson

Isa Watson’s love of science and data was instilled in her at young age by her father, a computer engineer. An American Chemical Society Scholar while studying chemistry at Hampton University, Watson then worked at Pfizer both as a research chemist in the metabolic diseases group and a data scientist in the neuropathic pain group.

In the research group, she developed drug candidates for diabetes treatment and her work on glucokinase activators was published in Tetrahedron Letters. In the clinical group, she designed and executed statistical analyses to inform and support the global clinical strategies for Lyrica—one of Pfizer’s top selling drugs with a peak of $3B in annual sales—in over 15 countries. Watson also holds a Master in Pharmacology from Cornell University.

Watson decided to go to business school to bring the technical and business together. After earning her MBA from MIT Sloan, Watson was a Vice President of Strategy at JPMorgan Chase in New York and Hong Kong. She worked closely with senior management and C-suite executives to build and execute various strategic initiatives across digital, product development, analytics, marketing and client services.

While navigating her professional and personal life, Watson noticed one consistent commonality that all successful people had: the core need for friendships. Millennials and Gen-Z have the highest feelings of loneliness and crave better social experiences more than ever before. And she knew she had the strength—and determination—to make a difference.

Watson left Wall Street to found Squad which is emerging as the app of choice for gen-z to talk to their close friends everyday. Backed by notable Silicon Valley VC firms and unicorn founders, Squad has been scaling nonstop since its launch.

Much more than just a VC-backed founder, Watson heavily incorporates her core values into the product and the way in which Squad scales. These days, most social connection takes place over text. While easy, texting distorts relationships and lacks the intimacy and vulnerability that grows and deepens friendships. Squad uses audio technology and habit creation to mimic real-life social conversations with your closest friends, everyday.