Bio

Commissioner Lakayana Yotoma Drury is a s social entrepreneur, educator, community advocate, writer, poet, and filmmaker. He is the founder and executive director of Word is Bond, a nonprofit leadership incubator for young Black men based out of Portland, OR which he formed in 2017. At his core, Lakayana is a storyteller who harnesses the power of community engagement and various mediums of art, including poetry, music, drawing and painting, photography, and film to uplift hidden stories and inspire others to collective action.

Lakayana was raised in Madison, Wisconsin by his hardworking mother and is the eldest of three children. He experienced adversity at an early age, as a young Black man navigating the education system and the absence strong male role models. He overcame those challenges and graduated from the University of Wisconsin Stout and went on to pursue a career as an elementary and high school teacher.

Lakayana is of Sudanese and Irish ancestry. His lived experience drives his passion for culturally-grounded education, mentorship, community development and economic investment, and reimagining community safety.

Lakayana’s leadership commitments include serving on the Local Public Safety Coordinating Committee (LPSCC) Executive Committee, the Center for Black Student Excellence (CBSE) Guiding Coalition with Portland Public Schools. In 2023, Lakayana was appointed to the Oregon Commission on Black Affairs for a three-year term.

Lakayana was named Portland Business Journal’s Class of 2021, Forty Under 40, was recognized as Executives of the Year in 2022, received the 2023 Community Leader of the Year at the 38th Annual Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Tribute by the World Arts Foundation, and produced his first film, The Black Stars, in 2024

Lakayana is a visionary leader who believes in building a world based on compassion for all people, where every individual has the resources they need to thrive. He believes in dismantling systems of oppression and replacing them with ecosystems that nurture the innate empathy of humanity.