Simon is credited by the sociologist Barbara Louis with breaking "new ground for future generations [of female students]" (German: "für die nachfolgenden Generationen [von Studentinnen] ... wegweisend") in her field.

[2] It was on a skiing holiday put on by the organisation in 1934 that she met her future husband Joseph Simon [de],[1] who was a member of the Austrian resistance to Nazism.

Because of her father's Bohemian origins, Simon held Czechoslovak citizenship and was able to move to Prague,[1] where she continued her education at the Masarykschule für Sozial- und Gesundheitsfürsorge, an institute for social work supported by the Rockefeller Foundation.

[4] In 1939, after Czechoslovakia was annexed by Germany, Simon emigrated to the United Kingdom, where she was supported by the Czech exile government[3] and worked in a number of jobs, including as a maid and cleaner.

[6] Having obtained American citizenship,[2] she returned to her native Austria in 1947,[4] where she studied the teaching methods of the psychoanalysts August Aichhorn[7] and Alfred Winterstein [bg].

[4] Although she had better career prospects in the United States, Simon moved back to Austria in 1963 and joined the Institute for Advanced Studies in Vienna as a research assistant in sociology.

[4] At the time of her appointment the academy suffered from low application numbers, which Simon attributed to "outdated" and " entirely inorganic" (German: "veralted ... und völlig unorganisch") instruction methods.

The alliance lobbied the Ministry of Education to upgrade the status of its teaching institutes and to extend the length of social work courses from two to three years.

[1] In her retirement, Simon remained active as the founder of Hilfe für Angehörige psychisch Erkrankter, a charity for the mentally ill and their families.

According to Louis, Simon "broke new ground for future generations [of female students]" (German: "für die nachfolgenden Generationen [von Studentinnen] ... wegweisend") in her field.

[8] In a volume on the Austrian scholar of social work Ilse Arlt [de], the sociologists Peter Pantucek and Maria Maiss label Simon as a "legend" (German: "Legende") in her field, writing that both Simon and Arlt viewed social work and its study as a "continuation of the Enlightenment project" (German: "Fortführung des Projekts der Aufklärung").