The Wisconsin State Journal’s top editor Ellen Foley told her staff Monday she will step down from her position effective Friday to seek another job in the area and to spend more time with her family, according to the State Journal.

In her four-year term, Foley, the first female leader in the newspaper’s history, didn’t shy away from risk in her editorial philosophy and often navigated through controversy.

“What Ellen did, she shook up the paper a little bit here, quite a bit in a lot of ways, and it needed to be shaken up. And I think she did a great job of building on the strengths here and then moving us forward,” State Journal publisher Bill Johnston said. “She’s a terrific lady, she’s a great journalist … She’s just a consummate professional.”

Foley is credited with implementing the “Reader’s Choice,” which allowed readers to vote online for a front-page story for most editions, as well as improving their Internet reporting presence and leading the newspaper to its first ever Pulitzer Prize nomination earlier this year, according to the State Journal.

Foley continued to lead the State Journal despite her husband’s more than year-long battle with lymphoma in the brain, and waited to announce her decision until a newsroom reorganization was completed and she learned her husband’s cancer was in remission.

“Most people back off in the middle of a fight, and we journalists don’t do that,” Foley said in the State Journal. “[But] I have watched my husband almost die twice in the last year, and that experience has led me to the conclusion that I need to start a new chapter in my life.”

The State Journal will conduct a national search for her replacement.