Team
Pascal Cools
General Manager
Pascal Cools studied law and then international relations at the University of Leuven (KU Leuven). In 1997, he started to work at the IT and management consultancy, Accenture, known then as Andersen Consulting. As a project manager, Pascal was involved in different large-scale change and optimisation projects for clients from both the private and public sectors.
After 8 years at Accenture, Pascal took the leap in 2005 and joined the then recently founded Flanders DC. He has been the General Manager since April 2007.
Caroline Merckx
Project Manager
After communication studies at the University of Antwerp and University of Leuven, Caroline started to work at the television production house, Woestijnvis. For two years, she looked for ordinary and less-ordinary Flemish people for the television program ‘Man bijt Hond’. In the run up to the 2006 municipal elections, she was an assistant on the VRT election program ‘ZegNuZelf’. In October 2006, Caroline said goodbye to the world of television to give the editorial office at Flanders DC a more professional edge. In October 2009 she became a project manager.
Nora Weytjens
Event Manager
After her education in commercial communication, Nora started her career in the event industry in 2002.
At the event agency UC Belgium she was responsible for organizing different kind of events ranging from teambuildings to product launches and conferences.
In 2008 she organized the Creativity World Forum commissioned by Flanders DC. She got to know Flanders DC quite well during the organization and was more than happy to become part of the team in May 2009.
With her expertise she is the ideal person to take care of all our events.
Marc Clerkx
Senior Project Manager
In the first 8 years of his professional career, Marc worked in several cross-border (Germany and the Netherlands) business-to-business marketing jobs. He then made a switch to the academic world and became professor marketing at the Kempen University College. He was head of the marketing department, coordinated the relations between the business department and the business environment and started up the research department ‘local economic policy’. As senior project manager at Flanders DC, he oversees all projects towards the different target groups and is focussing himself to bring in the creativity process in education.
Peter Bertels
Project Manager
Peter Bertels graduated in 2004 from Ghent University as a Master in Electronics Engineering. He joined the HES group at the same university to pursue a PhD about communication in hardware/software codesign. At Ghent University Peter created, together with some colleagues, the lab sessions for a brand new course about Complex Systems Design. During the Flemish Science Week, Peter co-organised a workshop which helped student to build their own intelligent robot. Peter is also one of the founding fathers of Dwengo, a non-profit organisation that promotes creative experiments with microcontrollers.
After finishing his doctoral thesis in March 2010, Peter joined Flanders DC, where he will use his enthusiasm to help improving the level of creativity in Flemish companies.
Hilde Lamproy
Office Manager
After her degree in Modern Languages Hilde Lamproy chose for a job at Fortis. Her career in the audiovisual sector started at Outside Broadcast. In 2009, after working nearly 3 years at Alfacam, she left the TV world en went into the creative industry to find the perfect job for her. It had to be a job in which all the knowledge she gained in the past years could be utilized. At Flanders DC she found her new challenge.
Since October 2009 Hilde joined our team as Office Manager. She’s a real centipede who ensures that everything runs smoothly in the office.
Hilde is responsible for the administrative, financial and logistical tasks.
Carlo Vuijlsteke
Project Manager
Shortly after his studies on contemporary history at the Ghent University, Carlo started to work at the Flanders Music Centre, an organisation established by the Flemish governement to support the professional music sector and to promote music from Flanders. As information- and communications coordinator he established, together with a team of four people, the website, database and build out the documentation centre. Since October 2010 he is member of the board of Jeunesses Musicales Belgium (Flanders), the Flemish branch of the largest youth music NGO in the world.
Carlo is the coordinator of the Flemish consultation platform on creative industries (a platform of 26 Flemish organisations from 12 different sectors) and is working within Flanders DC on stimulating entrepreneurship in the creative industries.
Jan Bormans
Valorisation Manager
Jan Bormans has been passionate about innovation during his entire career. In 1992 he became multimedia researcher at the Free University of Brussels. After subsequently joining the world leading IMEC research centre, he subsequently held the role of project leader, group leader, business development manager and finally strategic advisor. Jan's work at IMEC also involved improving the cooperation with several Flemish companies, networks and agencies. Jan combines a PhD with an MBA and works at Flanders DC since 2010 as valorisation manager. He strives to further increase the value of Flanders DC's projects and research for our stakeholders.