Dorcas Wright "Dede" Gardner (born October 16, 1967) is an American film producer. She was president since the founding of Plan B Entertainment and currently serving as Co-President with Jeremy Kleiner since 2013. She has won Academy Awards for producing the films 12 Years a Slave (2013) and Moonlight (2016), becoming the first woman to win two Academy Awards for Best Picture. She has also been nominated in the category for The Tree of Life (2011), Selma (2014), The Big Short (2015), Vice (2018), Women Talking (2022), Nickel Boys (2024) and F1 (2025), making her the most nominated female producer in Academy Awards history.
She is the daughter of Dorothy and John Gardner, of Chicago, Illinois. She graduated cum laude from Columbia University in 1990. Her classmates included television showrunners Jeff Rake and Gina Fattore. Her father is a partner at the Chicago investment bank William Blair & Company; her mother is president of the Michael Reese Health Trust.
In 2000, she married Jonathan Boris Berg in an Episcopalian ceremony on Martha's Vineyard.
She was a producer in all films unless otherwise noted.
In 2012, Gardner and her fellow producers were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture for The Tree of Life. In 2014, she won the Academy Award for Best Picture for the movie 12 Years a Slave alongside co-producers Brad Pitt, Steve McQueen, Jeremy Kleiner and Anthony Katagas. In 2015, she was nominated once again for the Academy Award for Best Picture for producing Selma alongside fellow producers Oprah Winfrey, Jeremy Kleiner, and Christian Colson. In 2017, she won her second Academy Award for Best Picture for the movie, Moonlight. She becomes the first female producer to win two Academy Awards for Best Picture.