Best career-path for non-traditional

Hi,

I'm a few year post-grad from a non-target school and I currently work in ad-tech industry in digital marketing sales but I want to get into the HF industry. Is the best thing for me to...

a.) continue down this path and use the CFA and network? currently making 180k+ b.) sacrifice 100k+ and go back to 55k to work as a 'brand equity analyst' within the company. The role would include financial analysis, valuation, and reading research. I would imagine this would make networking/applying direct a lot easier, so would CFA even be necessary?

Thanks in advance.