He was the Chief Executive Officer of Belgacom and chairman of the Royal Automobile Club of Belgium.
After his secondary education at the Collège Saint Michel in Brussels, he obtained a licentiate, in trade - and financial sciences from the Louvain School of Management at the Université catholique de Louvain (UCLouvain) in 1968.
In 1971, he left the United States and returned to Belgium as a management trainee at Texaco.
In 1989, John Goossens took the lead of the Antwerp subsidiary company of the French telecom group, Alcatel Bell.
He prepared the company for the liberalization of the telecom market via the plans Turbo and BeST.