Best known for his blog Insights on International Copyright Issues (awarded one of the top copyright blogs in the world and consistently ranked by Feedspot as a Top 50 copyright blog) Hugh Stephens has written articles for the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, The Globe and Mail, the National Post, The Conversation, The Diplomat, and more. He served for several years as Vice Chair of the Quality Brands Protection Committee, a coalition of more than 180 multinational companies engaged in strengthening IPR protection in China. He is also a Distinguished Fellow at the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, Executive Fellow at the School of Public Policy at the University of Calgary, and an associate faculty member in the School of Business at Royal Roads University, Victoria, BC.

Before returning to Canada in December 2009, he was Senior Vice President (Public Policy) for Asia-Pacific for Time Warner and prior to joining Time Warner in 2000, Stephens spent 30 years in the Canadian Foreign Service with the Department of External Affairs, later the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT). His last Ottawa assignment was as Assistant Deputy Minister for Policy and Communications in DFAIT. He also served abroad as Canadian Representative in Taiwan (Executive Director-Canadian Trade Office in Taipei), Counsellor and Chargé d’affaires at the Canadian Embassies in Seoul, Korea and Islamabad, Pakistan, among a number of other overseas and headquarters assignments.

Stephens was educated at the University of British Columbia (UBC), University of Toronto and Duke University, and has a Certificate in Mandarin from the Chinese University of Hong Kong.