Exquisite Knowing was founded by Ashley David, MFA/PhD. With more than 20 years of R&D driving the creation of exceptional tools and services, we support people to empower themselves and others, holistically.

We’re conscious, optimistic, smart, and compassionate. We believe theory and practice have seats at the table, but they aren’t the same thing.

We define innovation in terms of diversity and inclusivity, and our business is manifesting elegant and surprising ways to help our clients and constituencies solve meaningful and complex burning questions–both human and planetary.

We’re intrepidly fathoming depths. We’re hungry to raise our own bar. Every day. Conscious democratic participation rocks our world.

Be audacious. Reach out, and let us know how we can support you to empower yourself and others. We look forward to hearing from you.

Our Founder

Second Ward Veggies, a pandemic solution forged between Plant It Forward Farms and Second Ward Space, Houston, Texas

Ashley David, MFA/PhD earned degrees from Stanford University, New York University, University of Michigan, and The University of Georgia, and she has lived and worked on four continents in fields as diverse as tech, financial services, higher education, K-12, marketing, diversity & inclusion, filmmaking, art, and sail training and oceanographic research. Exquisite Knowing emerged from this diverse landscape as a system and suite of tools to explore and solve for questions related to social, economic, and environmental justice and sustainability.

Using EK tools and frames in combination with anthropological training, creativity practice, and a perspective cultivated across diverse industries, sectors, and cultural contexts, Ashley empowers clients to close the gap between mission statements and on-the-ground experience and deliverables. She partners with clients to tweak systems, structures, and everyday practices so they can deploy frameworks and tools that yield micro-empowerment that accrues and catalyzes mutual and reciprocal exchange. Transformation follows with paradigm-shifting successes that reflect constituent priorities equitably and raise the bar for everything from learning to leading, communicating to community-making.

Ashley is currently based on the coast of Maine, where, in addition to Exquisite Knowing, she works as an interdisciplinary artist. Poetry, prose, and project-based art have appeared in publications including: Pinhole Poetry, Web Conjunctions, Hyperallergic, The Offending Adam, Black Sun Lit, Alimentum, The Greensboro Review, Hanging Loose, Michigan Quarterly Review, Mid-American Review, The Southern Review, Verse, and Women’s Studies Quarterly. Scholarship has been anthologized, and she has performed and installed work in locations across the U.S. and overseas.

Empowerment accrues. Transformation follows. We help you do it better.