Kerry Gardner is a Melbourne-based documentary film maker with a deep background in the arts, philanthropy and nonprofit leadership, and is a champion of public/ private partnership.

In January 2018 Kerry was appointed a member of The Order of Australia in the Australia Day Honours List for outstanding services to the cultural sector, social inclusion and environmental sustainability.

In February 2018 Ms Gardner was appointed Chair of the Venice Biennale Council for Australia and has successfully raised well above the Australia Council’s philanthropy fundraising target for the 2019 Venice Biennale, as well as redesigning the donor experience program for patrons nationally and establishing a London International Venice Biennale Patrons’ Council. She has served as Chair of the Australian Institute of Art history at the University of Melbourne, Deputy Chair on the boards of Heide Museum of Modern Art, The Malthouse Theatre, and has served as a Director of The MCA Sydney, The Australian Chamber Orchestra, and The Great Barrier Reef Foundation. She is a member of the Grantmaking Committee of Culture and the Humanities of the Sidney Myer Fund. She is Founding Patron of The Lorne Sculpture Biennale, and the Natalie Miller Fellowship for Women in Film, and has sat on the Asia Pacific Acquisitions Committee of the Tate.

Currently, Ms Gardner is the first Australian appointment to the board of Global Fund for Women since 2017, and is the third Australian appointee to Women Moving Millions (New York) since 2017. In May 2021 she was appointed Co-Chair of the International Women’s Development Agency and has just published the first of two books with Melbourne University Publishing, ‘Australia at the Venice Biennale: A Century of Contemporary Art’.

Her strength lies in an inclusive, dynamic, creative and warm leadership style, and established networks in business, philanthropy, nonprofit organisations and an understanding of government process. Her motivation for daily work in the arts is her belief that creative activity enlivens and fosters the human experience, and believes in creating access and inclusion to all people as a form of cultural democracy.