Introduction & general advice/feedback

Hello, 

I just discovered this website/forum and thought I would join, introduce myself and see if I can third party opinions on my situation.

I am 37M with an accounting designation. I have worked at a big 4 accounting firm in audit for 8 years before transitioning to industry in a number of increasingly senior roles, but all in accounting. Along the way however, I realized I really like project work: acquisitions, divestments, business transformation, strategic planning, etc.

As a result, I left industry to re-join another big 4 accounting firm in their management consulting firm (the finance/accounting specialized team) hoping to do more of this. Unfortunately, although I was performing at a really high-level, the work was incredibly basic and boring and in 15 months I only got one complex problem-solving engagement. The rest of the time, I was a 'specialist' supporting strategy/operations/deals teams after they did the most interesting stuff and what was left was mostly accounting systems/accounting process stuff. 

After many discussions with partners at the firm, I decided use the pandemic as an opportunity to take a break and explore corporate finance in more depth in effort to find more intellectually interesting stuff and re-position myself out of the pandemic. Thus, at the moment, I am 1/2 through a masters of finance and doing really well but equity research or pure research isn't my thing. I really prefer challenges faced by businesses (M&A, financing decisions, capital structure decisions, corporate development, corporate portfolio management, etc.)

If someone is keen to share their thoughts/feedback, I would welcome the opportunity to discuss: 

Can someone with my background make the jump to a strategy/corporate finance role? If yes, how?

For reference, at my last firm the Strategy guys would do a lot of what I considered to be more corporate finance activities (financial analysis, financial modelling, acquisitions/divestments exploration, some valuation of potential targets, etc.) along with other 'pure' strategy things. Also 1/3 of the team previously worked in IB, 1/3 were 'strategy' people from other consulting firms and 1/3 were people from various parts of the firm who, over time, earned transfer to this time. 

Alternatively, because I enjoy finance,  and 'big picture stuff' should I be better off targeting pure corporate finance roles? Or even try and break into IB (I have been told by people with IB experience that I am too experienced and generally old and I am not in the target IB audience). 

Thanks ahead of the thoughts and feedback.

Majinn