Gordon Stone, Mayor of the Town of Pike Road, will deliver the keynote address to graduates at Troy University’s Montgomery Campus on May 23.

About 116 graduates are expected to take part in the ceremony, which will begin at 7 p.m. in the Davis Theatre for the Performing Arts on the Montgomery Campus.

Stone has served in the role of mayor since 2004 when the town had 350 residents and covered only a two-mile area. Today, Pike Road has more than 8,000 citizens and covers a 16-mile-wide area. Stone has been a champion of municipal planning and vision, educational opportunities helping all citizens succeed, efficient services and innovative quality of life programs.

Stone also serves as Executive Director of the Higher Education Partnership, an advocacy organization that works to strengthen the standing of Alabama’s four-year, public universities and communicate the critical role higher education plays in the economic well-being of the state.

An agricultural economics graduate of Auburn University with a Master of Business Administration from Auburn University Montgomery, Stone is a former walk-on and letterman on the Auburn football team.

He also serves as Executive Vice President of the National Young Farmer Educational Association and assists them with educational and meeting planning services. For many years, he served as an active participant in his family’s’ cattle farm in Wilcox County.

Stone lists his family and faith as the two priorities about which he is most passionate. He and his wife, Ellen, have two daughters and are members of Montgomery’s First Baptist Church, for which the couple organizes and hosts family mission experiences.