Karboul was the first woman in history to occupy Tunisia's Minister of Tourism position as the youngest member of the Mehdi Jomaa government from January 2014 to February 2015.
[citation needed] Her father, Mohamed Karboul, was the Secretary of State in the Ministry of the Interior in the Baccouche government and the Tunisian ambassador to West Germany.
[6] Karboul wrote Coffin Corner, a book published by Midas Management Press in 2015,[7] in which she describes a new leadership culture more suited to the complexities of the 21st century.
[8] From May 2015 to October 2017, Karboul served as the Secretary-General of the Maghreb Economic Forum, and a commissioner to the International Commission on Financing Global Education Opportunity.
She was the project leader for innovation management and supplier relationship for the Mercedes-Benz Brand in South Africa and Germany, where she worked from 1996 until January 2000.
[5] In addition to her work with Mercedes-Benz, she was also an executive for knowledge transfer and leadership development at the DaimlerChrysler Corporate University in USA, Singapore, and Germany until 2001.
[14] ESMT's Konstantin Korotov and Andreas Bernhard cited the case's learning and developmental impact on the coaching community among the reasons they selected Karboul for the award.
She was the first woman in Tunisian history to occupy the position, and served as the youngest member of Prime Minister Mehdi Jomaa’s government from January 2014 to February 2015.
Come back to be part of a startup democracy team.”[20] Controversy was raised around Karboul during a session of Tunisia's Constituent Assembly meant to give the incoming government a vote of confidence.
[21] Mehdi Jomaa defended his minister, stating that Karboul had never followed through with the trip in question after she was interrogated for several hours in an airport, reportedly for being Arab and Muslim.
[6][26] On her website, Karboul says it is her duty to “give a face to both Tunisian research and development and to the implementation of democratic, social and economic reforms and strategies, and also to network the institution with other bodies, instigate cooperation and gain supporters, so as to promote progress and development for Tunisian society and the whole region.”[27] In an interview with the Boston Consulting Group, she shared her vision for Tunisia's youth.
[28] The commission, which includes five former presidents and prime ministers as well as three Nobel Prize recipients, was created to reverse the lack of financing for education worldwide.
In October 2021, Karboul attended the Global Steering Group for Impact Investment Summit to chair a Keynote Fireside session titled ‘improving education through new financial models’.
[35] Karboul currently serves as an Advisory Board Member at the Global AI Index, which ranks nations based on their level of investment, innovation, and implementation of Artificial Intelligence.
[36] Karboul is also a Commissioner at The Education Commission, which is chaired by former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Gordon Brown and seeks to ensure that all children have access to learning within the next generation.
At the 2015 TEDx Berlin event, themed “How Leaders Thrive in a Complex World”, Karboul discussed some of the ideas from her recently published book The Coffin Corner.
[40] “It only takes one app to make an entire industry irrelevant,” she said, explaining that business leaders who rely too much on planning and controlling will struggle to keep up in a constantly evolving global marketplace.
[44] At the 2019 CogX festival, Karboul contributed to a panel discussion about the future of work and education, where she highlighted the ways that AI could help provide solutions to the learning crisis in the Middle East and Africa.