The New York Stock Exchange is set to get its first female leader in its 226-year history.

Stacey Cunningham, the NYSE’s chief operating officer, will become the Big Board’s 67th president, the exchange’s parent Intercontinental Exchange Inc. told The Wall Street Journal.

She will start her new role Friday, succeeding Thomas Farley, an ICE veteran who is leaving the Atlanta-based company.

Mr. Farley will become head of a new special-purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, backed by Daniel Loeb’s hedge-fund firm Third Point LLC, which will seek to raise $400 million and buy financial-technology companies, people familiar with the situation said. It will be called Far Point, the people said.

A SPAC, also called a blank-check company, goes public with no assets and uses the funds raised to make acquisitions.