Tara Winkler
Rebel with a cause
A masterclass in systems change through a personal tale of owning your mistakes and challenging the status quo.
A masterclass in systems change through a personal tale of owning your mistakes and challenging the status quo.
Tara’s gripping story about how she overcame a seemingly impossible challenge demonstrates how self-awareness, introspection, and humility can be a path to progress and growth.
Her talks illuminate unconscious bias and inspire others to challenge established thinking. Her story shows how embracing mistakes and failures and admitting you might have got it wrong can lead to true innovation.
At a time in which the status quo is no longer serving the needs of people and planet, there’s never been a greater need for disruptive systems thinking. Booking Tara for corporate events, conferences, business sessions, interviews, and writing opinion pieces will inspire your audience to take risks, learn from mistakes, embrace change, and blaze trails into unchartered territory.
Tara Winkler co-founded the Cambodian Children’s Trust (CCT) in 2007 with Pon Jedtha to help 14 children escape an abusive orphanage in Battambang, Cambodia. Over the last 15 years, she has led CCT through several major changes.
In 2012, CCT became the first organisation in Cambodia to transform its orphanage into a family-based care model and led the way in Cambodia’s care reform movement.
In 2019, CCT began another major transformation to address the root cause of the orphanage crisis and decolonise the field of international developemnt. The CCT’s Village Hive Project is revolutionizing the sector by building a universal social protection system that is owned, run, and controlled by the local community.
Winkler’s story has been featured on ABC’s Australian Story, 60 Minutes Australia, and many other international media platforms and academic journals. Her TED Talk ‘Why we need to end the era of orphanages’ has received over 1.2 million views. She also testified at the Australian Parliamentary Inquiry into Modern Slavery in 2017, alongside CCT ambassador Sinet Chan, which resulted in orphanage trafficking being formally recognised for the first time in history as a form of modern-day slavery.
Winkler’s book ‘How (NOT) to Start an Orphanage’ was published by Allen & Unwin in 2016. She is currently working on developing her book into a feature film produced by Sunstar Entertainment and is executive producing a documentary on decolonising development.