Tara Winkler is a systems change leader and social entrepreneur who has disrupted 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 have influenced national and global 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 family separation and decolonise development. 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 TED Talk, “Why we need to end the era of orphanages”, 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 decolonising development.
Tara Winkler built a model for change so effective that a national government adopted it. At nineteen she founded an orphanage in Cambodia, then found the courage to admit she had got it wrong, dismantle it, and build something a whole country now runs for itself. NSW Young Australian of the Year, TED speaker and much loved author, Tara hands audiences a clear, repeatable way to stop treating symptoms that prevent real change so we learn how to fix the system underneath… first.
