Building upon his experience as a (recovering) bureaucrat working at and with all levels of government, Karl-Filip founded the Cities of People partnership in 2018 to further develop and implement a people-centered model for future cities. In 2019 he successfully organised the first edition of the Brussels Creative Bureaucracy Festival.

Previously he served as the Chief Strategy Officer of the City of Ghent in Belgium for 15 years, responsible among other things for the city’s innovation strategy. He is the founder of Digipolis, the public ICT-company of the cities of Antwerp and Ghent. He was also a member of the ExCom of EUROCITIES, the largest European cities network, and chair in 2017 and 2018.