Meredith B. Cross, a former Securities and Exchange Commission official, has been named the new director of the commission’s corporation finance division, the SEC announced late Monday. She fills a gap left when John White stepped down late last year as head of the division, which oversees annual, quarterly, and proxy reports and other key corporate financials.

Cross comes to the SEC from corporate practice group of the Washington D.C. office of WilmerHale LLP, a law firm she joined in 1998. She previously served at the SEC for a few years in the 1990s, becoming deputy director during the Clinton administration of the division she will now head.

SEC Chair Mary Schapiro praised Cross as “a sensible problem solver and a brilliant mind on corporate securities law.”  Schapiro said that Cross would play a key role will in such issues as shareholder access to the proxy to nominate directors and the clarity of disclosures to investors.

Cross joined the SEC in September 1990 as an attorney fellow in the office of chief counsel in the corporation finance division. She became the division’s deputy chief counsel in 1992 and chief counsel in 1993, responsible for no-action letters and legal interpretations in the division. She then served as associate director of the division’s sections on small business and international corporate finance, “playing an integral role in international disclosure issues and accounting standards for use in cross-border offerings,” according to an SEC release. 

She became deputy director of corporation finance in 1994, a position she held until she left the SEC in January 1998. At WilmerHale, she has been advising clients on corporate and securities matters, capital raising, and financial reporting.