Owner, Peak Business Consultants, LLC
As the owner of Peak Business Consultants, Maki Pombo and her team offer local, individualized financial support services to businesses at varying stages of growth.
Peak strives to be a partner of their clients’ teams, helping them make critical decisions and offering a valued avenue for support as they navigate the many challenges that come with growth. Similarly, Maki’s internal team works together to bring their diverse skills to the group and mentor one another so that they all continue to grow and develop along their own paths. She also has a side passion business that is very much in its infancy — Volcanicashhotsauce.com. It is something she has dreamed about doing for many years and she made her first commercial batch in June 2020.
Maki was born in Tennessee and lived there until she was nine, lived in Missouri until she was 18, and then moved to Portsmouth, NH, and eventually settled in Rye. She loves the seasons and the mountains — hiking, climbing, and just being near them, along with the ability to be on the ocean and then in the mountains with just a short drive. Above all else, Maki really likes the people who have become her community here but enjoys traveling often. After completing a dual degree in Psychology and Outdoor Education, Maki, along with a group of like-minded friends (including her now-husband) planned a five-month mountaineering trip to South America. Starting at the very tip of South America, Tierra del Fuego, they traveled up through Chili, Argentina, Bolivia, and Peru. They climbed glaciers, did a 10-day trek on the Patagonian ice cap, attempted an ascent of Aconcagua and several lesser-known mountains in Bolivia, and completed a five-day hike on the Inca trail to Machu Picchu. At age 22, Maki completed a three-month NOL course in Kenya and has made many trips to Culebra, PR (where she later got married on a remote beach), and the list goes on. On any given weekend, you can often find Maki in the mountains of NH, usually solo hiking with her dog Leroy.
Maki is passionate about sustainability, and gets both angry and overwhelmed by the way humans are destroying the earth for short-sighted financial gains. She dreams of living in a country where every child truly has an equal chance, regardless of their race or socioeconomic situation. She believes in defending human rights and that everyone should have the ability to have their voices heard and to live a dignified life. Maki has been married to her husband and best friend, Matt Garthwait (aka Garth) for 22 years. They have an 18-year-old daughter, Maya, who just started her first year in college in San Francisco at SFSU, and two Vizslas (dogs), Leroy and Hank.
In her earlier years, Maki admits she often felt she should know more than she did to take the next step, which often manifested in insecurity and fear, causing her to stagnate. But as she has gotten older, Maki has embraced those areas of discomfort, realizing that by trusting in herself and the team she has built, there is an immense amount of freedom and personal growth, along with the growth of the business. She has always enjoyed physical challenges — rock climbing, mountaineering, mountain biking, etc. — that feeling of not being sure what is coming but pushing that edge of comfort to achieve something, but feels it has taken her a lot longer in her professional life to find that same level of self-trust and to continue to push to the edge to find what might be possible. Maki hopes that if more women can talk about how they got to where they are and be open about the struggles they faced along the way, that others who are feeling stuck, can realize that there is no one path — there are many and finding your own unique path is the fun part of the adventure.
“Don't wait until you are comfortable to take that next step. Don’t try to be a different ‘professional person than who you are at your core. It will crush your soul. Let your own unique light shine. Keep going; if you are truly in the business of doing something great, you will have failures, but without trying you will never reach that peak.”