Heather Stern has a lot in her cart. As the senior vice president for legal affairs and general counsel at Austin, Texas-based Whole Foods Market Inc., she oversees a nearly 75-person team that handles everything from litigation to loss prevention.

Stern’s legal career started in Georgia. She graduated from the University of Georgia law school in 2002, clerked for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit in Atlanta and spent a year as an associate at Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton.