Ngawang Wangyal (Tibetan: ངག་དབང་དབང་རྒྱལ་, Wylie: Ngag-dbang Dbang-rgyal), aka Sogpo (Mongolian) Wangyal, popularly known as "Geshe Wangyal" and "America's first lama," was a Buddhist lama and scholar of Kalmyk origin who was born in the Astrakhan province in southeast Russia sometime in 1901. He developed the code for the CIA that aided the Dalai Lama’s escape from Tibet, spearheaded a two decade long undertaking to lift political proscriptions on US visits by the Dalai Lama, opened the first Tibetan Buddhist dharma center in the West, and trained the first generation of Tibetan Buddhist scholars in America. He is considered a "founding figure" of Buddhism in the West.