Hugh Forrest worked at SXSW for more than 35 years, serving as President as well as Chief Programming Officer for South by Southwest (SXSW) until April 2025. In this role, he led the overall direction of the event, as well as supervised the creation of content for the SXSW Conference, as well as the SXSW Music Festival, the SXSW Film Festival, the SXSW Comedy Festival and SXSW EDU.

Forrest started his career at SXSW in 1989 and was involved with SXSW offshoot projects such as North by Northwest (Portland, Oregon), SXSW V2V (Las Vegas), MeCon (Frankfurt, Germany and Stockholm, Sweden) and South by South Lawn (Washington DC). He was named "Austinite of the Year" in 2012 by the Austin Chamber of Commerce (along with fellow SXSW Directors Roland Swenson, Louis Black and Nick Barbaro). In 2014, Forrest and these other SXSW Directors were named Austin Entrepreneurs of the Year by Ernst & Young. He was awarded a Key to the City in January 2023 by Austin Mayor Steve Adler.

He received an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters in April 2018 from Kenyon College, his alma mater. In 2021, he was awarded Diversity Champion of the Year by the Austin Black Business Journal.