Karel Joos is a Partner at Dentons Global Advisors in Brussels. He provides his clients with public affairs, corporate communications, and crisis communications consulting. His work primarily focuses on the industrials, technology, transport, and logistics sectors. Over time, he has developed expertise in healthcare, especially in reimbursements and reputational issues for pharmaceutical companies.
A construction engineer and financial economist, Mr. Joos received a military education in the Royal School of Cadets, the Royal Military Academy, and the Engineers Corps Academy, all in Belgium. Mr. Joos’s career has been multi-faceted. He served as a captain in the Belgian armed forces and co-authored four books on transportation economics. Prior to joining Dentons Global Advisors (formerly Interel) in 2008, he worked as an advisor to the Minister-President of the Flemish government and as a director in the cabinet of the Belgian minister for public sector enterprises, where he supervised policymaking for the Belgian railways and postal services operator Bpost and telecommunications operator Belgacom.
Mr. Joos is an expert on public-private partnerships (PPPs) and is a member of the team of PPP specialists for UNECE, the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe. Currently, he is a board member at Bepact, a community of Belgian public affairs professionals, where he heads training and education. In 2015 he published the first-ever textbook on corporate public affairs in the Benelux.
Fluent in Dutch, English, and French, with a conversational knowledge of German, Mr. Joos is a government affairs specialist who prides himself on his finely-honed storytelling skills. At his home in Antwerp, he writes literary fiction and has published, among other things, two novels and a novella. He is also a frequent contributor of op-ed pieces, and over the last 13 years has been published in the three leading newspapers in Belgium: De Standaard, De Tijd, and De Morgen.