Benjamin Todd Jealous said he will announce Monday that he is stepping down from his position as head of the NAACP.
Jealous was appointed to the presidency at age 35 in 2008, making him the youngest president in the 104-year-old civil-rights organization's history.
According to the organization’s website, during Jealous’ tenure, the NAACP's online activists have swelled from 175,000 to more than 675,000; its donors have increased from 16,000 individuals per year to more than 132,000; and the number of total NAACP activists has topped one million.
Jealous, 40, said his resignation will take effect Dec. 31. In the meantime, Jealous said he is speaking with schools within the Washington, D.C. are about possible teaching positions.
Jealous told USA Today in an interview on Sunday that he is stepping down from his post for family reasons, saying that that the constant travel as president and CEO of the nation's largest civil rights organization has kept him away too much from his wife, civil-rights lawyer Lia Epperson, and children, daughter Morgan, 7, and Jack, 13 months.
"Beginning next year, I look forward to pursuing opportunities in academia to train the next generation of leaders and, of course, spending a lot more time with my young family," Jealous said in a release from the NAACP.
The organization has not yet announced a new leader, but Jealous hinted there could be a major change.
"I'm the 17th president of the NAACP and the 17th man. I do expect that the next president of the NAACP will be different in some way," he told USA Today.