Chris Baarstad runs events at national scale, ships EdTech for ELA teachers, trains Fortune 50 staff on AI, and builds the tools that hold it all together. Baarstad Consultancy is the workshop, based in Yorba Linda, California.
Live LAN events, league operations, tournament structure, from the schedule grid to the floor on game day.
Multi-location hiring, scoring systems, compliance-aware terminations, employee management at SMB scale.
Classroom ELA teacher first, then Director of Innovation for three years, then operator. Currently shipping BookPulse (live reading platform), TpT annotation packets, and an LMS for multi-unit operators.
Custom Next.js / Supabase builds, Claude-powered internal tools, Discord automation, plus AI professional development delivered to enterprise teams.
Five disciplines, one principal. Operations, business development, sales, EdTech, and AI, built across a fifteen-year arc that started in an ELA classroom and kept widening.
From teacher to Director of Innovation for three years, shipping EdTech at scale. The last six years are the headline: business development, event management, and tournament operations at the national level, closing partner deals, locking venues, and putting national LANs on the floor.
Now: three engagements running in parallel, plus the slower builds on the bench. National esports operations. Embedded HR and a custom LMS for a multi-unit operator in Orange County. EdTech I own and ship.
Operations lead for the largest youth esports organization in the country.
People-ops infrastructure for a multi-unit boba shop company in Orange County.
A Discord bot built for gaming communities, moderation, engagement, and ops automation in one extensible package.
My Teachers Pay Teachers storefront, @csbaarstad, print-ready ELA chapter guides for middle & high-school novels, with more educator resources on the way.
AI professional-development program delivered to Johnson & Johnson staff, partnered through COAST Tactical Training.
An interactive ELA reading platform for grades 4–12, my own EdTech IP. Live and shipping continuous updates.
A 3–4 player mobile co-op horror game set in a haunted elementary school. Built in Roblox, ages 9+.
A text-based multi-user dungeon, old-school multiplayer RPG, built from scratch.