Rolf Hapel is Professor of Practice at Information School University of Washington, Seattle, in the "Distinguished Practitioner in Residence"-program, 2018-2020. He was director of Citizens' Services and Libraries in Aarhus, Denmark from 2006-2018 and city librarian from 1994-2006. He is a librarian by education and holds a master's degree in Digitization and Public Administration. He has served as librarian, deputy manager, city librarian, and director in four Danish cities.

He has been chairman of numerous steering groups, committees and boards and has written many articles and is an internationally renowned speaker on library development and transformation. He has served as expert in architectural competitions for new city libraries in the capitals of Norway and Finland and has worked with different international foundations as advisor in the library field. Among recent work tasks was heading the Danish Digital Library coordinating body, initiating and planning the series of biannual Next Library conferences that has put Aarhus on the map as one of the innovation hotspots of international librarianship, co-heading the development of the Design Thinking Toolkit for Libraries with Chicago Public Libraries and heading the planning and realisation of the acclaimed main library, Dokk1, in Aarhus that opened in 2015 and was awarded Library of the year at the World Library and Information Congress 2016.