As legal careers go, Ivan Fong, general counsel to 3M Co., has seen it all.

After clerking at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and then at the U.S. Supreme Court for Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, he spent seven years at Covington & Burling. Fong later jumped to the U.S. Justice Department, where he served as deputy associate attorney general during President Bill Clinton's final term. He would never look back at Big Law.

Fong held in-house posts first at General Electric and then Ohio-based Cardinal Health until 2009, when the Obama administration's first secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, asked him to serve as the department's general counsel. At DHS, he headed a legal team with responsibility over a broad swath of sub-agencies, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and U.S. Secret Service. So it was no surprise, perhaps, that his next landing spot was a company that produces everything from Scotch brand tape to ballistic helmets and body armor. Fong has served as 3M's general counsel since 2012.