Leadership - there are a lot of opportunities to change the status quo of my surrounding environment

Dears,
I need to shorten the text to be 500 words or less. how do you think i can do it? and I also need your opinion if i need to amend something

Chevening is looking for individuals that will be future leaders or influencers in their home countries. Explain how you meet this requirement, using clear examples of your own leadership and influencing skills to support your answer.

Ever since moving back to Egypt to pursue my undergraduate studies, I found myself in a situation where there are a lot of opportunities to change the status quo of my surrounding environment. At a young age, I led my way through joining Resala charity organization as one of the most active NGO in the field of adult literacy training. For ten years, I had the chance to lead several groups of illiterate adults as an instructor teaching them how to read and write. I helped them alter their weakness to strength where there was an obvious development in their academic progress, and they were able to successfully jump from one stage to another. This experience has contributed to a great extent in building my leadership skills and taught me that leadership is a way to create change and inspire others.

In 2009, as a result of economic recession's negative impact on companies in Egypt, my company decided to cut down marketing budget to around 70%. At that time I managed to convince the management to shift to digital marketing as a cost effective and efficient marketing tool. I took the lead in creating company's digital platforms, even though marketing was not my main task. Eventually, I was delegated to perform this task from designing campaigns, targeting the right audience and setting the budget. It started on a small scale as a personal initiative then turned into a successful step that enabled the company to acquire more clients and exhibited a significant increase in the sales.

In 2014, at the age of 30, I took the toughest, yet most life changing decision in my professional career to pursue my real passion for digital marketing. I started a career in marketing from scratch leaving my comfort zone with the good position and salary behind. Joining Diwan Bookstores as a marketing and social media executive allowed me to get exposed to the different aspects of digital and social media marketing. My leadership skills were further improved when I took the lead in setting the online marketing strategies. I was responsible for planning, implementing campaigns, and monitoring their impact. As a result, this strategy has generated a positive impact on the company's performance in terms of online sales which has increased to 100% in one year, as well as the increase in fan acquisition rates, and company's online outreach.

I've also taken my passion for digital marketing further by working as a freelancer for number of companies. COB -an event organizing company specialized in holding medical conferences- is one of them. As a digital marketing manager, I am responsible to handle their digital marketing platforms along with handling the media center during all conferences to cover all updates. This is improving my leadership skills as I am leading a team of photographers, technicians and designers to come up with the suitable content and live videos.

I strongly believe that it is never too late to pursue my passion and always make fresh starts as long as there is an added value. I took the lead of my career once when I decided to change in my 30s, and now by applying to Cheveneing to study a master in digital business, I am sure I will be better equipped with the knowledge that will help me lead a stronger career as a digital marketer.

Salma, cut the first sentence in the opening paragraph. That will bring your count down to 527. Now, if you prioritize the 3rd paragraph over the 2nd paragraph, that means deleting the 2nd paragraph, your essay will fall to an even lower 412 word count. This revision to the content of the essay will also highlight your most important leadership and influencing task. Now, while the influencing skills necessary are implied, the words you used in the job description made it clear that influencing in your line of work was an important part of the task. Implied is good, omitted is not. In this case, the implication is highly impressive and carries over to the other aspects of the essay as well.

In the paragraph about COB, insert the explanation that as the lead on all projects, your influencing skills are highly necessary when working with "the photographers, technicians and designers to come up with the suitable content and live videos. " Aside from that, I don't really see any other points that need to be addressed in the essay. You have the available word count to better develop the idea in the sentence that I indicated.