About
Outcome Critical

Founder & CEO

Marcela Lay founded Outcome Critical to intervene at critical inflection points where growth outpaces operating clarity and performance begins to strain.

Marcela has built and led organizations at the intersection of leadership, operations, innovation, digital strategy, and client experience, partnering directly with CEOs and executive teams during periods when ambition outpaced operating reality.

In prior executive roles, Marcela helped scale digital agencies, driving 190%+ revenue growth, managing a $70M P&L, and building operating systems that sustained performance through expansion.

Across her career, Marcela has consistently delivered impact by:

Translate strategy into execution that holds under pressure.
Build operating models and delivery systems that scale without burnout.
Develop leadership capacity as complexity increases.
Turn AI, digital, and product investments into sustained enterprise value.

Outcome Critical reflects the executive mandate Marcela brings to every engagement; embedded with authority, disciplined in execution, and accountable for measurable outcomes.

Founder Perspective

Outcome Critical exists because the same pattern repeats as organizations scale: what once worked begins to strain under complexity.

What worked brilliantly to build the business begins to strain as complexity increases. Every stage of growth demands a different leadership and operating model. When that evolution lags, ambition outpaces clarity, structure, and leadership capacity, and the business starts to strain.

Founders and senior leaders remain deeply involved in execution; not by choice, but because systems have not evolved with scale. Over time, leadership becomes consumed by approvals, escalations, and firefighting.

Teams work harder. Talent is strong. Intent is genuine.
Yet performance becomes uneven, and growth increasingly fragile.

Outcome Critical intervenes at that inflection point, restoring structure, focus, and execution discipline so results become repeatable and growth sustainable.

When strategy meets execution,

leadership determines the outcome

“Great visions, strategies, and ideas rarely fail because people disagree. They fail because everyone agrees, and no one owns what happens next.

— Marcela Lay, Founder & CEO

Why Fractional
Executive Leadership

Fractional leadership places experienced executive capability precisely where it matters most, inside the decisions, structure, and operating model that determine performance.

Outcome Critical operates through defined, outcome-driven engagements.

We step directly into leadership cadence during moments of growth strain, transition, or performance drift, bringing clarity to decision rights, discipline to execution systems, and structure to what has become reactive.

This is not just advisory work.
And it is not an open-ended part-time role.

It is a mandate.

We embed, stabilize, and build what lasts; then transition once performance sustains.

This model allows organizations to:

Restore decision velocity at critical moments.

Turn stalled decisions

into clear direction.

Build operating capability beyond the founder.

Create momentum without

dependency.

Fractional leadership is applied with intensity, is focused and mandate-driven, and is built to leave the business stronger than it found it.

Meet the Team

Senior executives. Embedded through outcome-driven engagements.

Marcela Lay, CEO at Outcome Critical bla

Marcela Lay

Kelly Pentecost

Veronica Law

Chief Executive Officer

Fractional Chief Strategy Officer

Fractional Chief Product Officer

Marcela is an executive operator and trusted advisor to CEOs and leadership teams navigating growth, complexity, and change.

She is known for bringing clarity to ambiguous situations, aligning leaders around what truly matters, and translating strategy into execution that delivers measurable results.

Her work spans AI strategy, product direction, operating model design, and leadership effectiveness, always with a focus on outcomes, accountability, and sustainable performance.

Marcela engages hands-on where leverage is highest, partnering closely with leaders at moments when decisions carry long-term impact.

Kelly is a senior strategist and operator who partners with leadership teams to bring structure, clarity, and momentum to complex strategic challenges.

She is known for her ability to connect business strategy, experience design, and operational reality, helping organizations move from fragmented thinking to coherent action.

With over two decades of experience, Kelly has worked across industries to reimagine digital properties, products, and services, while strengthening the operating models that support them. She engages hands-on at critical moments, helping leaders sharpen direction, make confident decisions, and align teams around what matters most.

Veronica Law is a senior product leader whose work is grounded in operating experience inside complex organizations and extended through fractional leadership across a wide range of growth stages.

She began her career as a product leader within companies such as Microsoft, Expedia, and Blue Nile, leading product teams through scale, platform evolution, and business transformation.

As a Fractional Chief Product Officer, Veronica has partnered with organizations ranging from large mission-driven institutions to profitable startups entering their next chapter of growth. She works at the intersection of strategy and execution, helping leaders define what matters, make hard tradeoffs, and build product systems that scale with clarity rather than complexity.