From Finance to Brand Management?

My background: I started my career in a well known tech company in a Central FP&A team supporting the group's CFO by helping him prep for Board meetings, quarterly earnings calls, strategy sessions, etc. A lot of fancy decks/presentations and high-level financial analysis. My favorite aspect of that role was the executive level communication and being able to tell the story of the business in the context of financial performance.

After a couple years I realized I needed more in-depth experience with bottoms-up financial forecasting, financial management, and budget ownership, so I took an analyst role at a top CPG firm supporting the Product Marketing Finance org. I've been learning a lot, and upon meeting and working with a lot of professionals in marketing and brand/product management, I realized I may be interested in pursuing a career in Brand or Product Management.

I've already starting thinking about my career path "story", where I have experience in executive level communication and crafting stories based off of numbers from hard analysis, and after transitioning to my current role at this top CPG firm I've gotten good exposure to the financial aspect of brand/product management by working closely with Brand Managers.

For anyone here with experience with this career path, is it totally necessary for me to attend a top MBA program to be able to make that career shift from Finance to Brand Management? I understand and am totally willing to start as an Associate Brand Manager or something like that - it's just that I'm not entirely enjoying my current role/team, and would ideally like to shift elsewhere within a year or so.

 
 

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