Tara Nguyen

CPO at Harrison.ai | Founder of Kindred | Supporting organisations to evolve faster than their growth curve — with head, heart and meaningful human impact

Greater Sydney Area

About

I believe HR creates its greatest value when it is tightly aligned to business strategy, grounded in inclusion and engagement, and enabled by technology and innovation. That belief has shaped my career. I focus on building organisations where people thrive and where talent strategy directly supports commercial outcomes. I am a commercially minded HR leader with deep experience partnering with C-suite leaders, leading teams through disruption, and delivering people strategies in complex, changing environments. My work spans operating model transformation, HR optimisation, and the digitisation of people services to improve both impact and efficiency. I specialise in building high-performing, highly engaged teams that deliver meaningful value to their stakeholders. I operate comfortably at both strategic and hands-on levels, bringing a practical, human-centred lens to every decision and recognising the people behind every strategy.

Experience

  • Chief People Officer at Harrison.ai
    Jul 2025 - Present · 1 yr

  • Founder at Kindred People Consulting
    Jan 2022 - Present · 4 yrs 6 mos

    We are Kindred People, a tribe of folks with heart and ambition to support businesses to make them be the best they can be. We help organisations through times of change, disruption and uncertainty across all HR and employee life cycle services – from big picture thinking to tactical application. We help set up or fix HR functions, develop and improve policies and processes, implement systems and set strategic direction. We’re not just another consulting firm. We are ‘talent for hire’, working as an extension to your team finding solutions specific to your unique needs rather than a ‘one size fits’ all approach. You can count on us to ask the hard questions with the best of intentions, because sometimes the old way of doing things isn’t working anymore. We bring deep and broad experience across not only HR functions but across business. We don't want a ‘dump and run’ strategy - we are focused on helping you to create a plan that’s sustainable and realistic for where you are, that will ease you through transformation with tangible and lasting results. We’ll partner and lead, support and scaffold. Success for us is knowing that our job is done, when you don’t need us anymore because you’re thriving on your own. With our safe hands, we ‘get’ you and we’ve ‘got’ you…

  • Lead Consultant at MindTribes Pty Ltd
    Jan 2022 - Dec 2025 · 4 yrs

  • Origin Energy (4 yrs 8 mos)
    • Head of People and Culture, Corporate
      Jul 2020 - Dec 2021 · 1 yr 6 mos

      Design and execution of the Origin and Corporate People Plan which targeted best outcomes in operating model design and support, leadership capability, diversity & inclusion, culture and performance

    • Head of Employee Services, Employee Experience
      Apr 2019 - Jul 2020 · 1 yr 4 mos

      Leading a team responsible for the delivery of both frontline employee advice as well as ownership of all back office P&C services. The team delivers services across multiple channels and across the entire employee life cycle.

    • Head of Recruitment
      May 2017 - Mar 2019 · 1 yr 11 mos

      As part of an Employee Experience leadership team I lead the Recruitment function at a group level for Origin Energy during a period of significant change.

  • Senior Manager - Client Operations and Delivery (Deutsche Bank) at Alexander Mann Solutions
    Jan 2016 - Apr 2017 · 1 yr 4 mos

    APAC Regional Sourcing Manager for Deutsche Bank Talent Acquisition - a senior member of the AMS management team and responsible for driving sourcing strategy and operational excellence across all aspects of our candidate attraction and sourcing channel management within Talent Acquisition. This included leading the development of our sourcing strategy and capability for our APAC regional recruitment team as well as overseeing offshore Global Client Service Centre Sourcing team