Studied Applied Economic Sciences at the University of Antwerp, with a special interest for International Economic and Diplomatic Relations.

After fulfilling a military service and working at several enterprises, I started working in 1987 at Voka – Chamber of Commerce and Industry Antwerp-Waasland as an expert on international trade. In that period, the Chamber obtained a contract from the European Commission for hosting a European Information Centre for SMEs. At this Centre, the Chamber developed expertise about various European policy fields, such as: the internal market; the European customs union; the EU’s external trade policy (e.g. free trade agreements).

At the Chamber I worked in the last 30 years on various projects, mostly funded by the European Commission or the Flemish Government, aimed at sharing expertise in doing business with the EU. This resulted in a course on EU market access rules for agri-food products to train business support organizations in third countries (e.g. candidate countries, Eastern Partnership countries).

This course was awarded in 2018 by the ETF in Turin as a best practice for a training in the field of internationalization. A project which is being implemented at this moment involves Ukrainian Chambers of Commerce and Industry. This project, supported by the Flemish Government, aims to match enterprises in Ukraine and Flanders for a corresponding business cooperation.