What Does It Really Take to Build a High-Trust Team in the Age of AI Fraud? — Danielle Labarbera, Sumsub

Danielle Labarbera has had a career spanning Accenture, Goldman Sachs, American Express, Onfido, and now Sumsub, and has been shaped by an early lesson in the strategic depth of sales and stakeholder management. As AVP of North America at Sumsub, her role is deliberately hybrid: hiring and expanding the team, coaching and mentoring experienced colleagues, managing stakeholder relationships on deals and pricing, and shaping 24-to-36-month product strategy based on client feedback and market signals. 

That range of responsibility reflects her broader view of leadership as something built on trust, both with clients navigating identity verification and with the team members she works to retain.

How has your career shaped the kind of leader you want to be?

Danielle Labarbera traces her leadership philosophy back to an early, unplanned move into sales at Accenture, and the mentor who helped her see its strategic value.

“It’s right from my first role at Accenture, on the graduate consulting scheme. My plan was to be a management consultant, but there were no roles available on the projects I wanted, so I was put on a sales bid for a large London bank. I remember thinking my career was over. I met the team leader, one of the partners, who spent a lot of time really getting to know me and understanding what I wanted to do. He helped me see how strategic sales actually was. 

One of the things I’ve always tried to carry through is that availability, that culture where there are no stupid questions, and where people can show some emotion and have somebody help them see another path forward. I don’t know where I would be if I hadn’t met that partner. I call it my sliding doors moment. Whenever I move to a different role, I have a network of people who have worked alongside me that would want to work with me again, and that’s ninety per cent of success, in my view.”

What do you look for when hiring, beyond technical skill?

Danielle Labarbera explains why cultural fit and adaptability weigh as heavily as experience when she is building a team.

“When you are hiring, you do need to look at previous experience. For more technical roles, it’s important the individual can really understand the platform and integrate into what the company is building. But I truly believe cultural fit and adaptability are as important, if not more important, because when you have that right team synergy, you can create magic. 

You get cross-functional collaboration where people bring up ideas, and it feels like an intellectually safe environment. That comes from hiring individuals who want to work and grow together. You can see very clearly, especially through the interview process, when a company genuinely holds cultural fit in high regard, as opposed to when they’re merely stating that they do.”

What’s the biggest misconception leaders have about identity and trust?

Danielle Labarbera unpacks why businesses often misjudge friction in identity verification, and where the industry is heading with reusable identity.

“A lot of what we’ve seen is that business leaders think verification is going to cause unnecessary friction, that the customer will be frustrated and won’t continue onboarding. America is typically five to ten years behind Europe in terms of legislation here. If you look at Germany, for example, you have to do a live video call with an agent to open a financial account. Consumers now understand they have to prove who they are; it’s become an expected part of using any technical app. What we’re looking to get to is a reusable identity, so a KYC check doesn’t need to be completed over and over. 

Organisations are moving toward a wallet or trust network where you verify yourself once and then have access to the different applications you want to use. It’s not about how far away that is; it’s here. It’s about how far we are from adoption, and that will be a real focus over the next twelve to twenty-four months.”

How is AI changing the sophistication of fraud and scams?

From obituary fraud to a near-miss with her own family, Danielle Labarbera describes how AI-driven scams now target emotion and urgency.

“I finished an interview before talking to you where they mentioned obituary fraud, a type of fraud I’d never even heard of, targeting people with fake obituaries. These scams typically prey on urgency or emotion. I was nearly caught out myself last year when we lost a pet. We posted on a local Facebook group, and within an hour someone responded saying the dog had been hit by a car and to meet them at the vet. For a few seconds, I started to think it was real. 

These are very sophisticated deepfake scams; people can clone your voice from just a few words. We need to take the shame away from being phished, and also have a process with your loved ones, a code word with your spouse or children, so that if someone calls claiming an emergency, you have a way to verify it’s really them. It’s not going to go away, so hoping it will is not addressing it.”

What question should be on every leadership team’s agenda?

Asked what she would put in front of every executive leadership meeting, Danielle Labarbera points to a question about retention rather than results.

What can I do to ensure that every person who works for me would want to work for me again? It shows your approach to leadership, and it shows how much you understand the motivations of your people and want to keep them happy, to foster a culture where individuals on the team care. I take the same approach with clients: what would make a client say they want to speak to us again, that they want to learn more about what we offer? That’s how you really understand the value of what the client is trying to do, understanding their business and what impact you can have on it.

Join the Conversation: The Ortus Club’s Executive Network

As Danielle Labarbera has shown, identity, trust, and fraud prevention are no longer back-office compliance concerns. They sit at the centre of how businesses build lasting relationships with customers and teams alike. Leaders navigating this shift, from reusable identity frameworks to increasingly sophisticated AI-driven scams, benefit from candid, peer-level conversation rather than isolated internal strategy.

Her approach to culture, hiring, and retention reflects a broader truth for today’s commercial and technology leaders: building a high-performing team requires the same intentionality as building trust with a customer. At The Ortus Club, we host curated executive roundtables that bring senior leaders together to exchange perspectives on exactly these challenges, from fraud prevention to team culture, in a setting built for open, high-value dialogue.

FAQs

Q: What is reusable identity, and why does it matter?

A: Reusable identity allows a consumer to verify themselves once through a trusted wallet or network, rather than repeating KYC checks for every new application or platform, reducing friction while maintaining security.

Q: What is obituary fraud?

A: Obituary fraud is a scam tactic that uses fake obituaries or emotionally urgent scenarios, such as claims about a lost pet or family emergency, to manipulate victims into sharing information or money before they have time to verify the claim.

Q: Why is cultural fit as important as technical skill when hiring?

A: Strong cultural fit creates the cross-functional trust and psychological safety needed for teams to collaborate effectively and stay motivated, which technical skill alone does not guarantee.

Q: How can job seekers stand out from automated tracking systems (ATS)?

A: Reaching out directly to a hiring manager on LinkedIn with a targeted, tailored message can succeed even when an application has been filtered out by automated screening.

Q: Why is know-your-business (KYB) verification becoming more important?

A: A rise in fraudulent business registrations, including fake businesses set up during COVID-era loan programmes, has driven increased focus on verifying the legitimacy of businesses, not just individual consumers, particularly for online marketplaces.