Simon Sommer, M.A., is Co-CEO of the Jacobs Foundation in Zurich, Switzerland. Prior to that, he was the Head of Research and a Member of the Senior Management at the Jacobs Foundation. In his current position, he is responsible for research project funding, the Jacobs Foundation Research Fellowship Program, intervention research, the annual Jacobs Foundation Conferences, and workshops and symposia at Marbach Castle. He developed and initiated the Klaus-J-Jacobs Research Prize as the largest and most renowned award honoring research on child and youth development.

Before joining the Jacobs Foundation in 2006, he worked at the Volkswagen Foundation in Hannover, Germany’s largest private research funder, and as a management consultant with McKinsey & Company in Berlin, Germany. He holds graduate degrees in Cultural Studies and Musicology from the Leuphana Universität Lüneburg, Germany, and the University of Maryland, College Park, USA.