He graduated from the Catholic (francophone) University in Louvain in 1987 with a degree in Romance Philology and Theology, and then embarked on a teaching career at the St Henry Technical academy in Mouscron, where he taught French and Religion.
He was elected as a municipal councillor in 1997 and as an alderman in 2001, serving under Mayor Detremmerie, with a broad portfolio of responsibilities that covered planning and development, land use, housing, youth, mobility issues, pensions and religions.
In addition, after Catherine Fonck moved on to become francophone Minister for Children, Youth and Health, on 19 July 2004 Yzerbyt took the seat that she had vacated in the national Chamber of Representatives.
[1] Less than a year later, in April 2005, he replaced Jean-Pierre Detremmerie as a deputy in the Parliament of Wallonia when the latter resigned in the context of a slow-burn controversy involving the local football club.
[1] His final years were increasingly affected by the Pancreatic cancer from which he died, a few weeks after celebrating his fiftieth birthday, at the main hospital in Mouscron at around three in the morning on 19 January 2014.