Ra Un Nefer Amen

Country of origin: Panama

Ra Un Nefer Amen (born Rogelio Alcides Straughn, on January 6, 1944) is the founder of the Ausar Auset Society, a Pan-African religious organization dedicated to providing Afrocentric based spiritual training to people of African descent. Ra Un Nefer Amen was born in the Central American country of Panama. His initial exposure to African culture came through his visits to the island of San Miguel where many enslaved Africans had escaped to after being brought to Panama in the 18th century by Spaniards to work in the gold mines. These Africans, of primarily East and Central African descent, have been able to maintain much of their traditional culture through the intervening period. It was the early experiences of this phenomenon that shaped his young self. Amen attended Panama's Conservatory of Music when he was six years old. He arrived in the United States on May 30, 1960 to continue his formal musical training and graduated from the Brooklyn High School for Boys in Brooklyn, New York in 1961. Upon graduating, Amen continued his formal training at Juilliard Prep (Pre-College Division) and Mannes College of Music.

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Jorge Cham

Country of origin: Panama

Jorge Cham (born in May 1976) is a Panamanian cartoonist and roboticist best known for his popular newspaper and web comic strip Piled Higher and Deeper (PhD Comics). Cham lives in the United States, where he started drawing PhD Comics as a graduate student at Stanford University. He has since been syndicated in several university newspapers and in four published book collections. He was featured on NPR on December 20th, 2010.

To find out more about Jorge Cham, visit his page on Wikipedia, or take a look at his personal web page.