“Everything that was mentioned in class is the way that we’re going,” Ramclam said. “I told him I appreciate it because now I’m seeing what he is doing and what his best interest is in for the department to move forward. I think that we’re in a better place now than we were a couple years ago.”

Driving that type of institutional evolution and connecting law enforcement agencies worldwide are among the goals of the National Academy, which today graduated 256 students, including 35 international law enforcement officers like Ramclam. The department in Belize has several National Academy graduates, but Ramclam is the country’s female police delegate.

A single mother of four born in the former British colony’s village of Independence, Ramclam knew early on hers would be a life of service to others. She was a youth leader in her church’s preschool for several years, leading kids on trips and into discussions of faith and community.

“I wanted to do something that would help people, to make their life better,” she said recently. “So I continued to search for something to help me do more for my country—not only for my community, but for my country.” She said it was a calling to become a police officer. “We do not choose,” she said. “We are called.”

That was 22 years ago, on May 11, 1997. Today she commands 42 police officers in Placencia, a coastal village popular with tourists on the Caribbean coast of Belize. She says her dual priorities are community policing to protect 6,000 residents and thousands more tourists and looking out for the officers under her. She also implores her officers to follow the golden rule to treat others as one would wish to be treated.

“That is a thing I try to instill in other people is don't treat them badly,” Ramclam said. “I tell officers, ‘You need to deal with these guys because they are human beings. Today it might be them, but tomorrow it could be you or me.’”

A central goal of the National Academy is exposing students to a variety of fresh perspectives—offered up by the FBI’s instructors and their classmates—that might challenge long-held, institutional, or outdated views.