Dries Sel specialises in "impactful leadership" and combining it with adequate management skills with a view to co-creating and implementing future-proof strategies. As a result, operational organisations become more robust, impactful and attractive. He combines extensive C-level experience in private organisations and companies with an important and structural link to government.

He successfully applied this combination of grounded methodologies and practical implementation as director of healthcare strategy at Ziekenhuis Netwerk Antwerpen (ZNA) from 2016 to March 2024. He combined this position for the past five years with the development of healthcare strategy in the context of the merger between ZNA and the Gasthuiszusters Antwerpen (GZA) into Ziekenhuis Aan de Stroom (ZAS). This merger, which will take effect in mid-2024, will make ZAS the largest hospital group in Benelux and one of the largest in Europe. From April 2024, he will be attached to Moore, where he assists governments and organisations with public assignments.

Before ZNA, he served as general manager of Forest National. Afterwards, he remained involved with the concert temple in the role of strategic consultant, where, together with the operator, he realised the renewal of the operating licence for another 30-year period.

Before that, he was a member of the executive committee of Securitas Belgium where he worked, among other things, on strengthening leadership skills and on a vision for public-private partnerships.

As the first general director of Brussels Philharmonic, he led the privatised orchestra from the public broadcasting company to an institution of the Flemish Government.

Besides managerial positions in various organisations, he is also called upon as an expert and for specific assignments. For instance, he is one of the official assessors on the jury as a management expert at Werkenvoor.be/Travaillerpour.be (formerly Selor) for the selection of some 300 top federal civil servants (mandate holders). He also made a business case for the federal government for FPS Bosa and laid the foundations of the strategic plans for Fedoclean and PersoPoint. At the Flemish level, together with the secretary-general, he drew up the plans for the merger of the Department of Environment, Nature and Energy (DLNE) and the Department of Spatial Planning Housing Policy and Immovable Heritage (RWO) to form the Environment Department.

Knowledge and experience are there to be shared, which is why he also teaches strategic management at HOGENT University of Applied Sciences and Arts and, until recently, at the Faculty of Economics of Ghent University where he taught "strategic management in the nonprofit sector" for many years. Since this academic year, he has been a guest professor at Antwerp Management School.