This paper examines a question of authorization within strategic design and design-driven professional contexts: who is legitimized to think long-term, define futures, set priorities, and act upon them? Design is approached as a situated practice, embedded in organisational and political dynamics, where the capacity to influence direction is unevenly distributed. The paper focuses on women’s professional, entrepreneurial, and educational trajectories to investigate how access to decisionmaking, recognition, trusted networks, capital, and structural positioning affect the possibility of exercising strategic authority. Drawing on desk research and qualitative interviews, the analysis moves from situated experiences to recurring patterns, and from these patterns to systemic conditions. The tensions and polarities emerging across the study reveal how expertise, recognition, and authority do not always align, and how relational, care-oriented, and long-term postures are enabled or constrained. The findings suggest that women’s contribution is shaped by how strategic authority is accessed, authorised, valued, and sustained.