The leader of Leadership Lawrence is leaving her post at the Lawrence Chamber of Commerce.

Nancy Longhurst, executive director for the leadership and community-building program, is leaving the chamber effective Aug. 24 to pursue other interests, said Lavern Squier, the chamber’s president, in a statement released late Tuesday afternoon.

Longhurst’s departure comes as the program prepares for its main fundraiser of the year: Thursday’s Cardboard Boat Parade downtown, and the subsequent Leadership Lake Challenge on Saturday at Clinton Lake.

The announcement also comes eight days after Shirley Martin-Smith, chamber chairwoman, said that the chamber would be doubling the size of its Leadership Lawrence classes, from 25 to 50, because of the unprecedented “volume and quality of applicants” for this year’s program.

That expansion now is being postponed, Squier said.

Program participants, or their employers, each pay $1,000 to participate in the eight-month program. Since its launch in 1982, the program has had 427 graduates, including Longhurst in 1988.