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Our team of leading global experts working on
behalf of orphans and children without parental care
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Philip Goldman, President
Ghazal Keshavarzian, Principal
Cassie Landers, Ed.D., MPH, Principal
Siân Long, Principal
Rosemary McCreery, Principal
David Tobis, Ph.D., Principal
Martin Guggenheim, J.D., Senior Advisor
Dana Johnson, M.D., Ph.D., Senior Advisor
Rev. Msgr. Robert Vitillo, Senior Advisor
Mary Eming Young, M.D., DrPH, Senior Advisor
Philip Goldman, President
Philip Goldman is President of Maestral International. He has been involved in all aspects of Maestral's operations, recently overseeing development and implementation of a comprehensive global Toolkit to Map and Assess Child Protection Systems that is currently being rolled out in a number of countries around the world. From 1992 to 2005, Mr. Goldman was a member of the World Bank's human development operations team in Europe and Central Asia, supervising a significant portfolio of social protection, education and health operations supporting poverty reduction and providing related project financing. From 2005 to 2008, Mr. Goldman was Senior Vice President of Encore One, L.L.C., a private equity firm in Minneapolis, MN, and from 2007 he chaired the Advisory Board of the Children in Families Initiative of the GHR Foundation, a grant program supporting transformational programs assisting children without parental care in Guatemala, Kenya, Nepal, Vietnam, Azerbaijan and Ukraine. Mr. Goldman is currently a Director of the Opus College of Business at the University of St. Thomas, a board member of the International Leadership Institute, a member of the Advisory Board of the Congressional Coalition for Adoption Institute, a Director of Catholic Charities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, and a Director of Progress Valley, Inc. Mr. Goldman received Masters Degrees from Harvard University (Regional Studies: Soviet Union Program) and the University of California at Berkeley (Political Science) and a B.A. from the University of Washington in Seattle.
Ghazal Keshavarzian, Principal
Ghazal Keshavarzian has experience working in the field of child protection, women's health, conflict resolution, and human rights in the United States, South Asia, Middle East, and the CEE/CIS region.. She has worked on women and children's health, protection and education issues as a researcher, development practitioner, and program manager. Most recently, she managed the Better Care Network, an interagency network facilitating information exchange on the issue of children without adequate family care. Prior to joining BCN, she worked with JSI Research & Training Institute's Healthy Women in Georgia project implementing the health and conflict resolution component targeting the conflict zones and internally displaced persons. Prior to JSI, Ghazal managed International Medical Corps Rural Inclusive Education Program in Azerbaijan, which integrated children with disabilities in the school system. She holds a B.A. in Sociology/Anthropology from Carleton College (Minnesota) and Masters in Law and Diplomacy from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University. She is fluent in English (native) and Persian.
Cassie Landers, Ed.D., MPH, Principal
Cassie has over twenty years of field level experience providing policy and program support to over 60 UNICEF country offices in Southern Africa, South Asia, East Asia, Middle East and North Africa, Central Asia and Eastern Europe. She has contributed to the development of UNICEF's early child development strategies since 1985, and has extensive experience in the design, implementation, and training of practitioners at all levels, developing global interventions ranging from parenting education to developmental pediatrics. Cassie has participated in rapid assessment missions in areas of conflict including Iraq, Afghanistan, Romania and Kosovo, and has designed interventions for children in conflict and post conflict situations as a consultant to EMOPs/UNICEF HQ.
Siân Long, Principal
Siân is an independent consultant working on vulnerable children, HIV and child rights. She has over twenty years of policy and programming experience in HIV, and has been based in South Africa for the past 11 years with time in Mozambique previously. Her consultancy work has focused on a range of program evaluations and technical assistance, largely to civil society organisations responding to vulnerable children affected by HIV. Her recent focus has been on gender-sensitive responses for vulnerable children through HIV and child protection programming across East and Southern Africa and linking child protection and social protection system responses to the field experiences of community-based programming for vulnerable children.
Rosemary McCreery, Principal
Rosemary McCreery began her career in international development with UNICEF in Togo in 1979, after serving in the Department of Foreign Affairs in Ireland for several years. In Togo, and subsequently in Madagascar and Indonesia, she worked with governments to develop UNICEF-supported programs of cooperation intended to improve the health and well-being of women and children. In 1990, Rosemary established in Romania UNICEF's first office in Eastern Europe since the mid-1950s. The program focused on policy development and service delivery for child protection, especially the issues of children in institutions, adoption and fostering, children in conflict with the law and children affected by HIV/AIDS. Rosemary served as Director of the Cambodia Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights from 1998-2000, working on the promotion of civil and political rights. In 2000, she returned to UNICEF to head the office for Russia, Ukraine and Belarus until 2003. Programs in these countries included young people's health, development and HIV/AIDS prevention as well as child protection. During her career, Rosemary also held senior management posts in UNICEF headquarters and in the UN Secretariat. Rosemary is fluent in French and conversant in Italian, and has some facility in Romanian and Russian.
David Tobis, Ph.D., Principal
David Tobis is the Executive Director of the Fund for Social Change which he founded in 2002. The Fund administers collaborations between governments, service providers, communities and foundations. For the past three decades he has worked to reform child welfare in New York and the United States. Beginning in 1991 he worked as a consultant to UNICEF and the World Bank to prevent children, the disabled and the elderly from being placed in long-term residential institutions in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. His monograph, published by the World Bank, The Transition from Residential Institutions to Community-Based Services in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union became the basis for the World Bank's strategy in the area. More recently he has worked with UNICEF and various foundations to strengthen child protection systems in countries throughout the world.
He was one of the national leaders of the Family Preservation movement to prevent unnecessary out-of-home placement in the child welfare and juvenile justice fields. He was previously Director of Human Services for New York City Council President Carol Bellamy and led that office's successful efforts to reform New York's foster care system. He was a Fulbright scholar to Guatemala and co-edited a book, Guatemala: And So Victory is Born, Even in the Bitterest Hour. He is completing a book, From the Other Side: The Experience of Parents Reforming Child Welfare that will soon be published by Oxford Press. He was a Revson Fellow at Columbia University, awarded for work that improves the conditions of life in New York City. He graduated from Williams College and received a Ph.D. in sociology from Yale University. David is fluent in Spanish.
Martin Guggenheim, J.D., Senior Advisor
Marty is the Boxer Family Professor of Clinical Law at New York University School of Law. One of the nation's foremost experts on children's rights and family law, he created the Family Defense Clinic, which represents parents and other adult relatives of children in foster care in New York City. Marty has been an active litigator in the area of children and the law and has argued leading cases on juvenile delinquency and termination of parental rights in the Supreme Court of the United States. He is also a well-known scholar, having published more than 40 book chapters and articles in leading law reviews, and is the author of five books on children and parents. Marty has written several chapters or articles on the CRC and a chapter on child welfare law in the United States in a book comparing the U.S. and English family law systems.
Dana Johnson, M.D., Ph.D., Senior Advisor
Dana Ernest Johnson, M.D., Ph.D. graduated from North Park College in 1970 and the University of Minnesota Medical School in 1975. He completed his pediatric internship and residency training and his fellowship in neonatology at the University of Minnesota where he also received his Ph.D. in Anatomy in 1983. Currently, he is Professor of Pediatrics, member and former Director of the Division of Neonatology and a member of the faculty in the Global Pediatrics Program at the University of Minnesota. In 1986 he founded the International Adoption Clinic that has become the largest adoption-related medical program in the world. Dr. Johnson's research projects include the use of orphanage intervention programs to ameliorate the negative effects of long-term institutionalization, the effects of an institutional vs. foster care environment on growth and development, the long-term outcome of international adoptees in the United States and the phenomenon of post-arrival "catch-up" growth in stunted post-institutionalized adoptees. Dr. Johnson serves on the Editorial Boards of Adoption Quarterly and Adoptive Families Magazine, is a Senior Research Fellow in the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute and has authored over 200 journal articles, book chapters and abstracts. He has received the Distinguished Service Award from the Joint Council for International Children's Services, the Friend of Children Award from the North American Council on Adoptable Children and the Harry Holt Award on the 50th Anniversary of Holt International Family Services.
Rev. Msgr. Robert Vitillo, Senior Advisor
Rev. Msgr. Robert J. Vitillo is a Roman Catholic priest of the Diocese of Paterson, N.J (USA) and holds a master's degree in social work from Rutgers University. As the Head of Caritas Internationalis Delegation in Geneva, Switzerland, he coordinates the advocacy efforts of this global Catholic development and humanitarian confederation on matters related to health, HIV and AIDS, and a range of other urgent social issues. Since 1987, Msgr. Vitillo has been engaged in education of church leaders and development of church-based programs in response to the pandemic of HIV and AIDS in Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, Middle East, and North America. Msgr. Vitillo serves as Chairperson of the International Catholic AIDS Funding Network Group and of the Board of Directors of the Global Community Service Foundation and a member of the Board of Directors of Medicines for Humanity, as an advisor to the HIV/AIDS Strategy Group of the Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance and to the Children in Families Initiative (sponsored by the and Gerald and Henrietta Rauenhorst Foundation), and as a member of the Emeritus Advisory Board of the National (United States) Council for Adoption. During the 1990s, he served as a consultant to UNICEF programs in Romania. He has authored several books and other publications on HIV/AIDS, child welfare, migration and refugee services, and other social issues. Bob is fluent in Italian, Spanish, and French, and can understand Romanian and Portuguese.
Mary Eming Young, M.D., DrPH, Senior Advisor
Mary Eming Young, MD, DrPH, received her B.S. (1975) and M.D (1979) from the University of Wisconsin and her DrPH (1985) from the Johns Hopkins University. She completed her pediatrics residency and preventive medicine residency training from the University of Texas, University of California Davis and Johns Hopkins Hospital. She is double board certified by the American Academy of Pediatrics and American Academy of Preventive Medicine and Public Health. For the past three decades, she worked at the World Bank, guiding efforts in international public health and child health and development. Her project management experience extends to operations in all regions and spans from China beginning in 1982 with the World Bank's first China health sector study and rural health reforms to maternal and child health and public health projects completed in 2008, Eastern Europe and Central Asia (led Poland's first health system reform), Middle East and North Africa, and LAC. Over the past fifteen years, as World Bank lead child development specialist and primary advocate for young children, she led global efforts to inform world leaders about Early Child Development (ECD). This put ECD on the World Bank's map and the World Bank on the global ECD map. Her publications include four major works on ECD: Investing in Young Children, Early Child Development: Investing in Our Children's Future, From Early Child Development to Human Development (also in Portuguese, Chinese and Arabic), and Early Child Development: From Measurement to Action (also in Portuguese). She was an author in the 2007 series on child development published by The Lancet. In addition, she has published numerous articles on the Chinese health care system, focusing on child health and maternal health. She has served as the U.S. Regional Editor of the Health Policy Journal, as a Board member of the Johnson and Johnson Pediatric Institute, as a Scientific Advisor of the Mediterranean Child Institute, a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the U.S. National Institute for Early Education Research and the International Step by Step Association. She speaks Chinese, Portuguese, English and Spanish (listening comprehension).
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