Watson taught at Sydney Grammar School until 2008 before moving into professional conducting. Conducting studies were with David Zinman at the American Academy of Conducting in Aspen and at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music as a masters and then a doctoral candidate under Imre Palló. In 2013, Watson won the Brian Stacey Award for Emerging Australian conductors as part of the 13th Helpmann Awards and was awarded a Dome Centenary Fellowship from the State Library of Victoria. She was the recipient of a Churchill Fellowship, the Sir Charles Mackerras Conducting Prize from the Australian Music Foundation in London and the Nelly Apt Conducting Scholarship. Watson was also the recipient of Opera Foundation Australia's New Berlin Music Opera Award in 2012 and the Bayreuth Opera Award in 2009. Watson was a finalist at the 2012 Emmerich Kálmán International Operetta Conducting Competition in Budapest, Hungary where she placed Third and received the Herend Porcelain Manufacturer's Special Prize and the Special Prize of the Kodály Philharmonia. In August 2013, Watson was appointed Music Director of the Interlochen Arts Academy Orchestra at Interlochen Center for the Arts with whom she was awarded the 2015 American Prize in Orchestral Performance. In the US she has conducted the Austin Symphony, Dallas Opera, Lyric Opera of Kansas City, Kansas City Ballet, Detroit Symphony Civic Orchestra, and World Youth Symphony. In Australia, she has worked as a guest conductor with the SBS Radio and Television Youth Orchestra, Willoughby Symphony and Melbourne Youth Orchestra. In 2011 she was Assistant Chorus Master of Sydney Philharmonia Choirs and Associate Conductor of the Tasmania Discovery Orchestra. She was the inaugural Conductor-in-Residence at Sydney's Conservatorium High School from 2011-2013. Watson led the 2008 World Youth Day Orchestra for the Papal Arrival at Barangaroo, Sydney Harbour in front of a live audience of 100,000 and some five million television viewers around the world. She holds a PhD in Conducting from the University of Sydney, where the subject of her doctoral dissertation was titled 'Carlos Kleiber: Gesture as Communication.'
