Meet the founder: Cleta Riojas
Discover the vision and dedication behind Freedom Generation Higher Education through the story of its founder, Cleta Riojas. Learn about her passion for Christ-centered education and her commitment to shaping future leaders.
Teaching & Coaching Were Always in Her DNA
Long before Freedom Generation existed, teaching and coaching were already part of Cleta's life.
Her professional journey began early, working as a fitness instructor and coach with LA Fitness and 24 Hour Fitness while simultaneously building a career in management within the automotive industry.
Coaching taught her how to meet people where they were, communicate clearly, recognize potential, build confidence, establish goals, develop discipline, and challenge people to accomplish things they didn't always believe they could do.
At the same time, automotive management developed another side of her leadership. She gained firsthand experience in operations, accountability, customer service, team development, problem-solving, and leading people with different personalities, abilities, and strengths.
Those early experiences established something that would follow Cleta throughout her professional life: a passion for teaching, developing people, recognizing potential, and helping others grow into it.
Corporate Leadership & Real-World Experience
Cleta's management experience eventually opened the door to Macy's Corporation, where she continued building her career in corporate retail leadership.
She served in various retail management and leadership positions across three cities, spanning San Diego County to Orange County. As she continued advancing through the corporate leadership ranks, her responsibilities expanded beyond managing teams and daily operations. She was also entrusted with traveling to train and develop others, allowing her to further develop the teaching, communication, and leadership abilities that had been part of her professional life from the beginning.
Working in demanding, fast-paced environments gave Cleta extensive experience in leadership, communication, training, strategic thinking, team development, business operations, accountability, customer relations, and problem-solving.
She learned how to recognize talent, build teams, develop future leaders, communicate expectations, navigate difficult situations, and maintain high standards while working with people from many different backgrounds.
Her academic education complemented that professional experience. Cleta earned a Bachelor of Arts in Communications from California State University San Marcos and later a Master of Arts in Strategic Communications from National University.
She had worked hard, was successful in the corporate world, and continued moving forward professionally.
Then she became a mother.
And her definition of success changed.
Motherhood Changed Everything
The birth of Cleta's first daughter changed the trajectory of her life.
After years of pursuing education, professional advancement, and corporate success, Cleta realized that no promotion, title, degree, or career accomplishment could replace being present for the children God had entrusted to her.
She made the intentional decision to step away from the corporate path she had worked hard to build and restructure her professional life around her family.
She didn't stop working. She didn't stop building. And she certainly didn't stop pursuing excellence.
She changed what everything else revolved around.
Cleta earned her California real estate broker's license and pursued work that gave her greater flexibility and the ability to work around the needs of her family.
Her career would no longer determine how her family lived.
Her family would determine how she worked.
That decision eventually became one of the deepest convictions behind the way she leads Freedom Generation today:
“Family is our first ministry. Everything else God gives us to build should flow from that—not compete with it.”
Entrepreneurship & Bistro at the Pier
Motherhood didn't end Cleta's entrepreneurial ambitions. It changed how she used them.
Alongside her husband, Pastor Adam Riojas, Cleta founded Bistro at the Pier, an Oceanside coffee business that has become a favorite among both locals and visitors.
Building and operating Bistro at the Pier allowed Cleta to combine entrepreneurship, hospitality, business leadership, community involvement, family, and ministry while maintaining the flexibility she wanted as a mother.
It also gave her the firsthand experience of building something from the ground up—taking an idea and turning it into a real business, serving customers, managing operations, solving problems, adapting to change, developing people, and persevering through the realities of entrepreneurship.
Those experiences continue to influence how Cleta approaches education today.
She believes young people need knowledge, but they also need opportunities to lead, create, solve problems, take responsibility, communicate with people, and turn ideas into action.
A Pastor's Wife & A Life Rooted in Ministry
Since 2010, Cleta has served alongside her husband, Pastor Adam Riojas, in pastoral ministry at At The Cross Oceanside, the church Pastor Adam founded and where he serves as Senior Pastor. Today, At The Cross is also the ministry home and campus of Freedom Generation, bringing together two areas that have shaped so much of Cleta’s life: faith and education.
For Cleta, being a pastor’s wife has never meant simply standing beside her husband on Sunday mornings. For more than 15 years, she has been actively involved in the life of the church—walking alongside families, encouraging women and parents, supporting ministry leaders, participating in outreach, helping meet practical needs, and serving people through both joyful and difficult seasons.
Together, Adam and Cleta have intentionally built a life where ministry extends beyond the walls of the church. Whether through At The Cross Oceanside, their businesses, community outreach, hospitality, raising their children, or ultimately Freedom Generation, they have sought to use what God has placed in their hands to reach people, strengthen families, and point others toward Christ.
Those years in ministry have deeply influenced the way Cleta leads as an educator and Head of School. She has seen firsthand that people—and especially young people—need more than information. They need truth, relationship, discipleship, accountability, encouragement, and adults willing to genuinely invest in their lives.
That same ministry heart is woven into Freedom Generation today. Cleta believes Christian education should never separate academics from faith or the school from the family. Instead, the church, educators, and parents have an opportunity to come alongside one another while respecting the God-given role of parents in raising and discipling their children.
“Ministry isn’t simply something we do at church. It’s how we live, how we raise our children, how we care for people, and what we do with whatever God places in our hands.”
And for Cleta, that calling has always started in the same place:
at home, with family as her first ministry.
Becoming a Homeschool Mother
When her daughters reached school age, Cleta wanted to remain deeply involved in their education.
She began homeschooling her daughters from kindergarten, initially working within the public charter homeschool system.
Over time, however, she began encountering curriculum and assignments that did not align with the Christian beliefs and biblical worldview being taught within their home.
It caused her to wrestle with a bigger question:
Who ultimately has the responsibility for shaping the minds, beliefs, character, and education of our children?
For Cleta, the answer came back to the family.
In 2020, she made the decision to step away from the public charter system and take greater ownership of her daughters' education.
She came to understand that bringing public education into the home wasn't necessarily the same thing as providing a Christ-centered education.
If God had entrusted these children to her and Adam, then their education was part of that responsibility.
That realization eventually led her to something that would fundamentally shape her philosophy of education.
Discovering Classical Christian Education
As Cleta continued searching for what education should truly look like, Classical Christian education became the root of her educational philosophy.
She found in the classical tradition something she believed modern education had too often lost:
Education isn't simply about transferring information. It is about forming a person.
Classical Christian education seeks what is true, good, and beautiful while developing wisdom, virtue, logic, discernment, and eloquence—all grounded in the truth of Scripture.
For Cleta, it put structure and language around many of the things she had already come to believe as a Christian mother and educator.
“I don't want students simply taught what to think. I want them taught how to think—to reason, ask good questions, recognize truth, communicate clearly, and understand why they believe what they believe.”
As she incorporated Classical Christian education into her own daughters' education, she became increasingly convinced that this was the educational path she wanted for her own girls.
And she began seeing the difference firsthand.
Cleta has watched her daughters make significant strides through Classical Christian education, academically as well as in their ability to reason, communicate, engage ideas, and make connections between what they are learning.
She has witnessed that growth in other students as well.
Students who once hesitated to speak begin participating in meaningful discussion. They start asking deeper questions. They make connections between history, literature, Scripture, science, and the world around them. They learn that education isn't simply about memorizing enough information to pass the next test.
They begin learning how to think.
“One of the greatest things I've seen through Classical Christian education is what happens when students stop simply looking for the right answer and begin learning how to ask the right questions.”
For Cleta, Classical education isn't about recreating the past.
It is about recovering timeless tools students desperately need for their future: wisdom, logic, discernment, strong communication, virtue, and the ability to recognize truth in a world filled with competing voices.
And Classical Christian education goes deeper still.
Christ isn't an addition to the curriculum. He is the foundation from which truth itself is understood.
From Homeschool Mother to Founder
What Cleta experienced with her own children eventually became a calling to come alongside other families.
In 2021, she founded Freedom Generation Higher Education as an educational hub, bringing together Christian academics, enrichment, mentorship, and meaningful community.
She understood the parents walking through the doors because she had been one of them.
She knew what it was like to ask:
Who is influencing my child?
What worldview is shaping what she learns?
Is she learning how to think—or simply being told what to think?
Are her individual gifts being recognized?
Are the people teaching her reinforcing or contradicting what we're teaching at home?
Those questions still influence how Cleta leads Freedom Generation today.
Under her leadership, Freedom Generation has continued strengthening its Classical Christian foundation and expanding its educational network and opportunities. The school developed its relationship with Turning Point Education, piloted college dual enrollment with trusted Christian higher-education partners, and became a member school of the Association of Classical Christian Schools (ACCS).
For Cleta, however, these aren't simply affiliations to place on a website.
They represent a continued commitment to strengthening what Freedom Generation can offer students and families.
Classical Educator
Although Cleta serves as Founder and Head of School, she has intentionally remained involved with students.
She still teaches.
Cleta teaches classes within Freedom Generation and also serves as a dual enrollment professor, teaching college-level courses to high school students.
That matters deeply to her.
She doesn't want to know students only through schedules, grades, reports, or administrative decisions. She wants to sit across the table from them. Hear their questions. Challenge their thinking. Recognize when they're struggling. Encourage them when they need it. And see the moment a gift begins emerging that perhaps even the student hasn't recognized yet.
Nearly three decades of professional life have given Cleta a perspective on education that reaches far beyond a classroom.
The coach taught her how to motivate, challenge, teach, and recognize potential.
The corporate leader and trainer taught her excellence, accountability, communication, strategy, team development, and leadership.
The entrepreneur and business owner taught her initiative, perseverance, adaptability, problem-solving, and how to turn vision into reality.
The pastor's wife taught her that leadership begins with serving people.
The homeschool mother taught her that children aren't products of a system—they are individuals entrusted by God to their parents.
The Classical Christian educator gave structure to her conviction that education should cultivate truth, wisdom, virtue, reason, discernment, and eloquence.
And the dual enrollment professor allows her to challenge older students to rise to college-level expectations while they still benefit from close mentorship.
Yet beneath every one of those roles remains the one that changed everything:
Mother.
Parents Are the First Educators
One of Cleta's strongest convictions is that Freedom Generation exists to come alongside parents—not replace them.
She believes Scripture places the primary responsibility for raising, instructing, and discipling children within the family.
Teachers matter. Mentors matter. Schools matter tremendously.
But educators should never forget whose children they have been entrusted to teach.
Cleta intentionally points students back toward their families. She encourages students to honor their father and mother and reminds them that their parents hold a God-given responsibility and influence in their lives that a school should support rather than compete against.
“We aren't here to take a parent's place. We are here to stand beside them, reinforce what they are building at home, and help them educate and disciple the children God has entrusted to them.”
For Cleta, parent partnership isn't a marketing philosophy.
It is part of the biblical foundation of education.
Every Child Has a God-Given Gift
Cleta also believes one-size-fits-all education can overlook something essential:
Children weren't created to be identical.
God has intentionally created every student with different gifts, abilities, interests, personalities, and purpose.
Part of education is creating enough meaningful opportunities for those gifts to emerge.
That is why Cleta's vision for Freedom Generation combines rigorous Classical Christian academics with enrichment, mentorship, leadership development, and real-world learning.
Students need Scripture, literature, history, mathematics, science, logic, critical thinking, and strong communication.
But they should also have opportunities to explore leadership, entrepreneurship, engineering, technology, media, photography, videography, fine arts, athletics, practical skills, and college-level learning.
Not every child's gift will emerge behind a desk.
One student may come alive through literature. Another may discover a mind for mathematics or engineering. Another may have an eye for photography, film, or design. Some will lead naturally. Others will build, create, teach, serve, invent, coach, start businesses, pursue ministry, or enter fields that don't even exist yet.
“Our job isn't to decide God's calling for a child. Our job is to help cultivate what He has already placed within them and give them opportunities to discover where those gifts may lead.”
Classical Roots. Future-Focused Education.
Cleta sees no contradiction between providing students with a time-tested Classical Christian education and preparing them for a rapidly changing future.
She believes they need both.
Technology will change. Careers will change. Artificial intelligence, engineering, science, media, entrepreneurship, and industries we cannot yet imagine will continue reshaping the world students enter.
But the need to reason well, communicate clearly, recognize truth, exercise discernment, understand human nature, work with excellence, and possess strong character will not change.
That is why her educational vision intentionally brings the timeless and the future together.
Students should read great books. They should know Scripture. They should understand history. They should study mathematics and science and learn logic and rhetoric.
And they should also be given opportunities to build, create, innovate, lead, explore entrepreneurship and emerging technologies, and experience college-level academics.
The goal isn't simply college readiness.
It's life readiness.
The Heart Behind Her Leadership
Cleta has experienced many different definitions of success throughout nearly three decades of professional life.
She has taught and coached. Managed teams. Trained leaders. Advanced through corporate leadership. Earned undergraduate and graduate degrees. Earned her real estate broker's license. Built businesses. Founded Bistro at the Pier. Served alongside her husband in ministry. Homeschooled her daughters. Become a Classical Christian educator and dual enrollment professor. And founded Freedom Generation.
She is grateful for all of it.
Every experience taught her something she now carries into her leadership.
But none of those accomplishments changed her understanding of success as profoundly as becoming a mother.
“A résumé can tell people what you've accomplished. A degree can tell them what you've studied. A career can show what you've built. But none of those things can replace what you pour into your children.”
That is the heartbeat behind how Cleta leads Freedom Generation.
She believes in academic excellence. She wants students prepared for college, careers, entrepreneurship, leadership, and whatever opportunities the future brings.
But she wants something much deeper.
She wants to come alongside parents in raising young men and women who love Jesus Christ, know what they believe and why, think deeply, communicate clearly, recognize truth, defend their faith, work with excellence, discover their God-given gifts, and possess the courage to lead rather than simply follow.
Future parents. Pastors. Entrepreneurs. Engineers. Scientists. Artists. Educators. Tradesmen. Business owners. Innovators. Public servants. And leaders whose influence may reach places none of us can see today.
Whatever God calls them to become, Cleta wants students to understand that their gifts have purpose, their character matters, and their faith should shape how they live, work, lead, and serve.
For Cleta, Freedom Generation is not simply the culmination of nearly three decades of professional experience.
It carries the heartbeat of a mother who came to understand that education is about far more than preparing children for what they will do someday. It is about helping shape who they are becoming—and coming alongside their parents as they raise the next generation to know Christ, pursue truth, discover their God-given purpose, and have the courage to lead.
"The instructor in her knows how to motivate and challenge. The corporate leader understands excellence, accountability, communication, and leadership. The entrepreneur understands initiative, perseverance, and real-world problem-solving. The homeschool mother understands that no two children learn exactly alike. And the Classical Christian educator understands that knowledge without truth, wisdom, and character is incomplete."
Cleta Riojas' teaching philosophy