Career shift for 27yo consultant/accountant to break into investing

Hi All,

Long time lurker, first time poster. I was hoping I could get some advice on a career change into the investing world (broadly speaking, but ideally PE/HF/ER) or even banking (but probably just as a conduit to investing). I've been interested in investing since I was in high school and have studied it/done it personally since then, but have taken some wrong turns in my career that I'm determined to correct (albeit late).

Profile: -27 years old -Non-Ivy target undergrad, finance and accounting major -First job Big 4 internal audit (big mistake, didn't fully understand the role and was blinded by the brand name) where I stayed for two years and got my CPA -Moved to a $1b family office for three years (small headcount) wearing a few hats working for the CFO doing performance/risk reporting on public equity, PE, VC, and RE portfolios, helping with startup operating companies (getting financial operations established), producing financials, evaluating external managers (HF, PE, RE), and a little administration -Currently (for past 6 months) working at a regional CPA/advisory firm managing a growing group doing financial transformation/outsourced CFO consulting for startups (mostly tech/media); job entails creating/restructuring financials and processes, building/amending operating models, budgets and projections as well as some transaction services work (buy/sell side diligence) -As far as skills, my accounting is strong, I'm nimble in Excel and can build operating models (although haven't done a valuation model professionally) for smaller companies, and I have a decent general finance knowledge base (although admittedly probably not as sharp as it could be since I'm not really using it in my work)

Thoughts/Options: I've thought that I could go maybe one of three ways, and would welcome additional ideas: -Move to a VC or small/lower middle market private equity firm working in portfolio company operations, and then transition to the investing side (no idea how many of these kinds of jobs are out there, or how hard this move would be) -Get my MBA...big questions here are, would I have to go to a top 10 school to make this viable? Am I hamstrung by my accounting-heavy resume? If I applied in 2018 for entry in 2019, would this make me too old? -Network into a small boutique that would be willing to take a flier on me (seems a lot easier said than done)

Any advice would be greatly appreciated, I'm willing to put in the work to make this a reality, and don't really care about the paycheck, much more interested in just breaking into the space instead of dancing around it like I have been.

Thank you!