From a childhood plagued by being bullied to a driven pursuit of higher education, the cleft lip-marred man now embattled with his former employer over tax practice ethics has come to know uphill battles all too well.

Vanguard Group whistleblower David Danon is a Bulgarian refugee’s son who not only survived the New Jersey schoolyards he grew up on but worked multiple jobs to fund bachelor’s and master’s degrees before finally enrolling in law school, where he “won honors as the top first-year student, top tax graduate, top contracts student, and a member of the law review and the honor society Order of the Coif,” a Philly.com reporter stated in a recent article.

“He was great. Very bright. That’s why he ended up at Sullivan & Cromwell,” a top financial law firm, professor Jeffrey Colon said in the article.

From there, he ascended to a trio of other Wall Street firms and eventually to Vanguard and a Cape Cod-style home for his growing family on a Wayne cul-de-sac.

For years, he resisted what he thought were illegal tax avoidance policies within the company, and then the battle boiled over.

“You don’t want to turn in people you work with. It’s painful. You do it when you have no other choice. I was pushed against the wall. I have no other career,” he said in the article.

Read more about who Danon is and where his lawsuit against Vanguard stands on Philly.com here, and refer back to previous Chesco Business Today coverage of an early interview here, the lawsuit here, its implications here, and the key evidence in question here.