Jaime Alemán Healy - The Grand Slam of Travel

Biography

Jaime Alemán Healy is a Panamanian explorer, lawyer, and diplomat who became the first person in history to complete the Travel Grand Slam: visiting all 193 United Nations member countries, reaching both geographic poles (North and South), and traveling to space aboard Blue Origin's NS-32 mission on May 31, 2025. His life combines professional excellence with an unmatched passion for exploration and discovery.

Travel Biography

1. Jaime Alemán was born in Panama City, Panama on November 14, 1953. He started traveling while a student at the University of Notre Dame, where he did his sophomore year abroad in Angers, France (1972-73). During that time, Mr. Alemán visited numerous Western European countries, including the UK, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Monaco, Belgium, Denmark, Italy, Austria, Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands, Germany, etc., as well as Poland and the Soviet Union behind the Iron Curtain.

2. In January of 1975, Mr. Alemán participated on the Semester at Sea Program named World Campus Afloat, departing from Port Everglades, Florida and visiting Morocco, Ivory Coast, Ghana, South Africa, Kenya, Tanzania, Sri Lanka, India, Malaysia, the Philippines, Hong Kong, the People's Republic of China, Taiwan and Hawaii, prior to disembarking the ship in Los Angeles, California.

3. After completing his Juris Doctorate at Duke Law School in 1978, Mr. Alemán joined the Legal Department of the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington, DC and traveled extensively for over 3 years in the Caribbean and Central and South America, including the Bahamas, Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, Trinidad & Tobago, Guyana, Brazil, Ecuador and Honduras.

4. After his return to Panama in 1982, Mr. Alemán set up the law firm Alemán, Cordero, Galindo & Lee, and proceeded to set up offices in various jurisdictions around the world, including Luxembourg, Geneva, Cyprus, Dubai, the Seychelles, Singapore, Hong Kong and Uruguay, which resulted in a heavy schedule of international trips.

5. At the same time, Mr. Alemán started traveling extensively by himself and/or with his family to faraway places like New Zealand, Australia, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, Nepal, Lebanon, Egypt, Israel, Venezuela, Belize, Rwanda, Uganda, Bulgaria, Rumania, Finland, Estonia, Zambia, Zimbabwe, etc.

6. In addition to the trips mentioned above, in the year 2003, Mr. Alemán visited Antarctica on the SS Explorer (owned by National Geographic), thus completing his visit to all seven continents.

7. The following years saw Mr. Alemán continue to travel to different corners of the world, until he became Panama's Ambassador to the United States from 2009 to 2011. After completing his post as Ambassador, Mr. Alemán spent the next couple of years writing his autobiography titled "La Honestidad no Tiene Precio", which he published in July of 2014. In the meantime, he continued to travel to places like Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Botswana, Namibia, Granada, Dominica, St. Vincent & the Grenadines, St. Kitts & Nevis, Trinidad & Tobago, Macedonia, Albania, Montenegro, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Slovenia, etc.

8. In September 2015, Mr. Alemán's wife Pilar was appointed Panama's Ambassador to France. By that time, Mr. Alemán had traveled to 120 out of the 193 UN member countries. He moved to Paris to accompany his wife while she served as diplomat. Upon arriving in France, he set his mind on visiting the remaining 73 countries. During that time, Mr. Alemán visited Iran, Ukraine, Belarus, Georgia, Armenia, Kuwait, Oman, Bahrain, Algeria, Mauritania, Senegal, the Gambia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Chad, Burundi, Sudan, South Sudan, Eritrea, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and several other countries.

9. After his wife resigned as Ambassador to France in June of 2017, Mr. Alemán continued his relentless drive to reach his goal of visiting every country in the world. During that period, he visited many dangerous places, including North Korea, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan and finally Libya in January of 2020, at the height of that country's civil war. In February and March of that year, he visited Tuvalu, Papua New Guinea, Palau and Nauru, thus finishing his visits to all 193 United Nations countries. He returned to Panama in early March just before the world shut down due to the Covid pandemic. He was certified by NomadMania as the first Hispanic American to have visited all 193 UN countries.

10. In 2021, Mr. Alemán published a book named "Alrededor del Mundo en 48 años" (Around the World in 48 years), detailing his life-long passion for traveling and publishing photos of him in all the countries.

11. In January of 2024, he visited the geographic South Pole as part of an expedition organized by the company White Desert, and then went to the North Pole in August of that same year on an ice breaker operated by the French company Ponant.

12. On May 31st of 2025, Mr. Alemán traveled to space as part of the crew of Blue Origin's New Shepard NS-32 mission, thus becoming the first person in history to complete the Grand Slam of Travel by visiting all 193 UN member countries, South and North Poles and Space.