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This paper draws on a larger study where 34 women practising and supporting equity-oriented learning design across the world were interviewed in early 2021. The paper highlights the strategies learning designers use to navigate clashes between their own values and those held by their institutions. The authors argue that positionality, institutional culture, and personal history impact how learning designers navigate these spaces and that understanding context is essential when using an ecosystems theory view. Finally, the paper explores four shared building blocks framed by brown’s (2017) elements of an emerging strategy, which promotes a way of seeing change as small actions and connections. These in turn create complex systems and patterns which eventually become ecosystems and societies.