Our Story

Maestral International was founded in 2008 by Philip Goldman following years of work on the World Bank’s human development team. There, he collaborated with colleagues focused on developing and financing social services for vulnerable populations, often working to bridge silos across the social protection, health, and education sectors. Philip developed an interest in children and development policy after witnessing the devastating impact of Soviet-era institutionalization on children in the early 1990s. 

What became clear through this work was not only what was going wrong for children, but why. The close to one billion children experiencing violence and adversity were at the margins of the development dialogue in those days. Children’s outcomes were being shaped by fragmented systems—policies developed in isolation, services delivered without coordination, and investments that failed to account for children’s full developmental needs. 

The evidence was and remains compelling: when children are protected and supported within safe, nurturing families and communities, the benefits extend far beyond childhood, strengthening education, health, economic participation, and social cohesion over generations. Yet too often, child protection and wellbeing remained severely underfunded and disconnected from broader social and economic planning.

Maestral was created to help shift that trajectory. Beginning with a foundational collaboration with UNICEF to map and assess child protection systems, Maestral has focused on helping governments, communities, and their domestic and external partners move from isolated interventions toward stronger, more integrated systems. Since its founding, Maestral has delivered more than 200 projects across 100 countries, working with a wide range of partners to advance child protection, child and adolescent wellbeing, and social policy. This experience continues to shape Maestral’s role as a trusted technical partner, bringing global expertise together to support policies, systems, and services that put children at the center of long-term, sustainable development.