Tara Winkler is a systems change leader and social entrepreneur who is disrupting the international aid sector by proving that bold reform is possible. She co-founded Cambodian Children’s Trust (CCT) in 2007 to rescue 14 children from an abusive orphanage. Since then, she has led CCT through pioneering transformations that are influencing international policy.
In 2012, she closed CCT’s orphanage to reunite children with families, sparking Cambodia’s care reform movement. In 2019, she launched the Village Hive Project to tackle the root causes of poverty, family separation and end dependence on charity. In 2025, the Cambodian government adopted the Village Hive as the official national framework for social protection and is now rolling it out nationwide – cementing CCT’s model as a blueprint for systemic change.
Tara’s work has been featured on ABC’s Australian Story, 60 Minutes Australia, and international media. Her TEDx Talk, “Why we need to end the era of orphanages”, was the most tagged moment from the entire event and has been viewed over 1.2 million times. She is the author of How (NOT) to Start an Orphanage (Allen & Unwin, 2016) and is currently producing a documentary on disrupting the aid sector.
At nineteen, Tara Winkler, founded an orphanage in Cambodia, then found the courage to admit she had got it wrong, dismantle it, and build something so effective that a national government is intent on scaling it across the country. NSW Young Australian of the Year, TEDx speaker and much-loved author, Tara helps audiences rethink how they approach change. Instead of trying to solve symptoms, which prevents real change, she challenges them to change the systems underneath.
Talking Points
Keynote Presentations
Tara Winkler doesn’t just theorise a better way to fix a broken system, she built one so effective that in 2025 the Cambodian government adopted it as the national framework for the entire country.Keynote Presentations
Her story is unforgettable. At nineteen she set out to help by rescuing 14 children from an abusive orphanage in Cambodia. After founding an orphanage to care for those children, she discovered her good intentions were quietly feeding the very problem she was trying to solve. What Tara did next is a masterclass in how change happens, a problem that every organisation grapples with. She dismantled the orphanage she had built and replaced it with a community-owned model now scaling across a nation.
Tara turns that hard-won experience into a clear, repeatable approach any team can follow. Her core message cuts through every industry. You cannot solve a symptom; lasting change comes from finding the root cause hiding in plain sight, and having the courage to take action.
Tara’s talks challenge audiences to rethink entrenched systems, embrace failure as a catalyst for innovation, and re-imagine what’s possible when courage meets humility.
Named NSW Young Australian of the Year, a TED speaker at the Sydney Opera House, and author of How (NOT) to Start an Orphanage, Tara leaves an audience with both the will to change and the method to do it.
Core themes in Tara's Presentations:
- A model for change so effective, a country adopted it. Tara's approach proved itself at national scale.
- From one broken orphanage to a national blueprint. Her story shows how a single problem, tackled well, can reshape a whole system.
= Solve the problem, not the symptom. With the right process, lasting change is possible where quick fixes fail.
- How change happens. Audiences hear directly from someone who has changed a nation and learn what it took.
- Hope and courage that anyone can act on. Her story inspires people to make real change in their own lives and workplaces.
Video
AU Skip navigation Search Create Avatar image Why we need to end the era of orphanages | Tara Winkler
Could it be wrong to help children in need by starting an orphanage? In this eye-opening talk about the bad consequences of good intentions, Tara Winkler speaks out against the spread of orphanages in developing countries, caused in part by foreign donors, and details the harm done to children when they are separated from their families and left to grow up in institutions.Tara Winkler | 60 Minutes Australia: Saving the Children
Eleven years ago Tara Winkler was a naive 19-year-old living a sheltered life in Bondi when she decided to travel to Cambodia for a holiday. Prosperity to poverty was certainly eye-opening for her, especially when she visited little children in the country’s many orphanages. Tara fell in love with them – it’s impossible not to – and she vowed to rescue as many kids as she could. She started up her own charity and home and raised her profile back in Australia to raise money for the orphans of Cambodia. Then she discovered she had been completely fooled because, as it turned out, most of her “orphans” had parents and families. But instead of giving up she decided to expose this cynical tourist trap, and then save the children in a completely new way.'The House of Tara' ABC Australian Story
Tara Winkler was just 19 when she set off on the trip to Cambodia that would change her life. After coming across an orphanage where funds were embezzled and young girls sexually abused, she set up her own orphanage in the city of Battambang in 2007. Seven years later, the organisation she created is no longer an orphanage but a community development organisation offering help to poor families and more than 100 children each day. Tara Winkler is no longer 'mum' to the kids. But in the four years since she was first profiled on Australian Story, she has faced dramas in her professional and personal life that nobody could have predicted. The story is introduced by fashion designer Jodhi Meares, a supporter of Tara Winkler's Cambodian Children's Trust.
