He is a Distinguished Professor of Marketing and Associate Dean of Research at Northeastern University's D'Amore McKim School of Business.
Pauwels studied at St Joseph College, Turnhout and later pursued Commercial Engineering at the university level, completing internships in Germany and Ireland, where he first encountered marketing.
He obtained a Master’s degree in Marketing with high distinction at Louvain-la-Neuve, focusing his thesis on competitive price response.
After a visiting scholarship at Harvard Business School in 2016, Pauwels joined Northeastern University in Boston in 2017, becoming a Distinguished Professor the following year.
[3] He holds adjunct and visiting roles at BI Norwegian Business School,[4] Groningen University,[5] and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.