E. Roe Stamps IV will be Ohio State’s commencement speaker on Sunday. Credit: Courtesy of Ohio State
E. Roe Stamps — the 2026 Spring Commencement speaker — hopes to use his experiences in business, philanthropy and scholarship to encourage students to pursue their dreams.
Ohio State announced Stamps will be the commencement speaker Sunday, highlighting his work co-founding a private equity and venture capital firm and the Stamps Scholars Program. The program provides scholarships at over three dozen universities worldwide, according to an Ohio State press release.
“We expect you to offer that extraordinary experience, and you expect us to be there to help you with the funding and anything else that we can add to make it work,” Stamps said. “I think that really works well for both partners, in this case, Ohio State and ourselves.”
Stamps became affiliated with Ohio State in 2013 when the scholars program added the university to its list of partners. The program is designed to provide students with a full-ride to the institution, with additional funding to pursue enrichment opportunities like research or travel, according to the program’s website.
“The goal is to have your very best admits decide to go there instead of going to wherever else they might want to go,” Stamps said. “The kid could go anywhere, and they’ve chosen to come here, so why don’t you respect that confidence and help justify it by offering a truly extraordinary educational opportunity for them, and the schools do that.”?
Of the 2026 graduating class, 19 students received the scholarship as freshmen. The class of 2027 has 23 and 2028 and 2029 have nearly double that number, with 36 and 38 respectively.?
Stamps said that he was asked to be the speaker about three months ago, though the idea of speaking to everyone inside Ohio Stadium, also known as the ‘Shoe, was initially daunting.?
“Hopefully all those people will be there to wish the class of 2026 the absolute best in their lives,” Stamps said. “My goal is to help them celebrate an incredible accomplishment of graduating from a great university, to offer a few thoughts about how I got here, although it’s not about me, it’s how those thoughts might apply to graduating students.”
Without any major spoilers, Stamps said that he will reference four key points while speaking and each point comes from his personal experiences that might be relevant to the 22-year-olds in the crowd.
“I boiled it down to four things,” Stamps said. “I can’t tell you what they are, because it’s a big secret, but I’ve got four things that I think might be somewhat relevant to young people as they look at the next step in their lives.”
Again, without revealing the heavy-hitters, Stamps said some of the larger ideas will be mixed throughout the speech.?
“A key message that I’m going to try to get across is that I was a mediocre student, and yet I did okay in life,” Stamps said.?
“There is still hope for all of us mediocre students to do well in the world,” he added. “What might you do to improve your prospects for accomplishing your goals, not my goals for you or anybody else’s goals, your own?”
Beyond speaking at commencement, Stamps said he has seen over 4,000 students who have benefitted from the scholars program. He has plans to expand the scholarship to include more recipients, build the campus communities and provide more opportunities for students.?
“The rewarding thing about what we do is that we see these truly amazing young people, and we see them grow. We contribute to that growth, maybe even alter the growth trajectory,” Stamps said. “We’re particularly proud of our relationship with Ohio State and in doing that, it’s a great place.”
