Catching up with Dajana Gajic-Fisic for International Women’s Day
You don’t have to look far to find inspiring examples of women’s achievement in the fraud industry, where parity in the field yields inspiring success stories across the board.
Longtime Riskified partner and renowned fraud expert, Dajana Gajic-Fisic, is one such example.
One of our 2023 Titans of Ecommerce award winners, Dajana received the Vision Award for her advocacy of risk management and its impact on the industry. She is a frequent speaker at industry conferences, including presenting at our first European Ascend event in 2025.
Currently serving as VP of fraud strategy at The Wolfe Companies, and head of ecommerce risk management for Finish Line prior to that, Dajana keeps her finger on the pulse of fraud trends and the evolving ecommerce landscape. In honor of International Women’s Day, we checked in with her to learn more about her career, her perspective on the industry, and what keeps her motivated.
Q: What first captured your interest and made you decide to build a career in fraud prevention?
Dajana: It was the complexity and constantly evolving nature of the work. Fraud prevention is a fast-paced space where no two cases are the same, which means you’re always learning, investigating new situations, and adapting to emerging schemes.
I enjoy analyzing patterns, thinking critically, and staying one step ahead of criminal tactics. Most importantly, I’m motivated by the impact. Being able to actively stop crime, protect victims, and prevent financial harm makes the work meaningful. It’s not just about identifying fraud — it’s about intervening at the right time and making a real difference.
Q: Your career has spanned many areas of retail. What keeps you energized in your work today?
Dajana: Throughout my career, I’ve encountered many different risk environments, but the gift card space at Wolfe is particularly distinctive, and genuinely interesting and challenging.
Gift cards operate with a level of speed and liquidity that creates unique exposure compared to traditional retail products. The immediacy of digital transactions and the scale at which they move require sharp monitoring, fast decision-making, and a highly tuned fraud strategy.
What makes this space especially compelling is the constant need to balance growth, customer experience, and risk in a product category that evolves alongside the broader digital ecosystem. The landscape changes quickly, and staying ahead requires adaptability, strong analytics, and cross-functional collaboration. That combination of complexity and impact is what makes the work both demanding and deeply engaging.
VP of Fraud Strategy, The Wolfe Companies
It’s an unfortunate reality that fraudsters often lead the innovation curve, which means fraud teams can’t afford a “we’ve always done it this way” mindset.
Q: How do you stay ahead of new and increasingly sophisticated fraud threats?
Dajana: It’s an unfortunate reality that fraudsters often lead the innovation curve, which means fraud teams can’t afford a “we’ve always done it this way” mindset.
In a fast-moving digital and ecommerce environment, staying ahead requires openness to new approaches, continuous testing, and thoughtful adoption of emerging technologies like AI and automation. Even in large organizations where change can be complex and slow, fostering a culture of adaptability and data-driven decision-making is essential.
At the same time, focusing only on sophisticated threats shouldn’t mean ignoring persistent, lower-tech schemes like first-party misuse or refund fraud. Many losses still stem from policy-enabled abuse. Staying ahead requires balance: embracing innovation while strengthening fundamentals, analyzing trends continuously, and evolving strategies as quickly as the threat landscape itself.
Q: What’s the key to finding the “sweet spot” between strong security and a seamless customer experience?
Dajana: The goal is to optimize performance, minimize risk, and keep the customer journey as frictionless as possible, and that balance is never static.
There’s no “set it and forget it” solution. Fraud strategies require constant calibration as new schemes emerge, customer behavior shifts, and trends evolve.
I continuously evaluate the relationship between KPIs and KRIs — looking at approval rates, fraud rates, chargebacks, customer friction, and false positives together rather than in isolation. It’s about understanding the trade-offs. Tightening controls may reduce fraud but increase friction, while loosening them may improve conversion but raise risk.
Customer feedback and false-positive monitoring are critical parts of the process. Measuring where legitimate customers are being declined, analyzing root causes, and identifying patterns in friction points all create opportunities for improvement. There’s no perfect fraud strategy, but there is constant work to refine it — making it smarter, more adaptive, and aligned with both risk tolerance and customer experience.
Q: Where are AI and machine learning creating real value in fraud prevention — versus just hype?
Dajana: In my experience, AI and machine learning create the most value when fraud prevention moves beyond payment authorization and examines the full end-to-end customer journey.
Traditional rule-based systems require constant tuning, manual reporting, and large operational teams to adjust thresholds and respond to new patterns. Machine learning allows us to analyze far more signals across the transaction lifecycle, adapt faster to new behaviors, and reduce the need for constant manual intervention.
That shift creates space to focus on broader risk areas — from account security and behavioral anomalies to post-fulfillment fraud. With better visibility across the full lifecycle, we can identify gaps, place safeguards at the right points, and optimize controls without slowing the click-to-buy experience.
Over the next two to three years, I see AI continuing to improve decisioning accuracy, reduce false positives, and enable more proactive, predictive fraud strategies rather than purely reactive ones.
VP of Fraud Strategy, The Wolfe Companies
There’s no perfect fraud strategy, but there is constant work to refine it — making it smarter, more adaptive, and aligned with both risk tolerance and customer experience.
Q: If you could give one piece of advice to yourself early in your career, what would it be?
Dajana: I would tell myself to always keep an open mind — especially about things I don’t yet understand. Stay curious, keep learning, and be willing to explore new ideas and perspectives. Growth often comes from stepping into unfamiliar areas.
I’d also remind myself not to chase a “silver bullet.” In fraud and in business more broadly, there’s rarely one perfect solution. Meaningful progress usually comes from many small, thoughtful improvements made consistently over time. Those incremental changes often create far greater impact than waiting for one big breakthrough that may never come.
For anyone entering this field, male or female, I’d also share this advice:
- Learn the business, not just the fraud. Understanding commercial goals, customer behavior, and operational realities will make you far more effective. Fraud doesn’t exist in isolation — the best decisions balance risk, growth, and customer experience.
- Build relationships, not just processes. Fraud prevention is inherently cross-functional. Strong partnerships with product, operations, data, and leadership help drive meaningful change.
- Protect your energy. Fraud is fast-paced and reactive by nature. Pace yourself. Long-term impact comes from sustainability, not burnout.
To network and learn from visionary leaders in fraud and risk management like Dajana, be sure to register and join us at Ascend 2026, May 4–6 in New York City.
