Marian Croak

Marian Croak studied experimental psychology before moving into engineering, joining Bell Labs, then part of AT&T, at a time when almost no one in the field looked like her. She became a specialist in telecommunications systems just as the industry stood at the edge of one of its most significant transitions: moving voice communication from analogue telephone networks onto the internet.

Croak led the engineering research that made Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, commercially viable and reliable at scale — the technology underlying video and voice calling platforms used by billions of people today, from Skype to WhatsApp to Zoom. Her work solved fundamental technical problems in transmitting real-time audio over data networks without unacceptable delay or quality loss.

She also pioneered the use of text messaging for charitable donations, developing the technology that allowed people to donate to disaster relief efforts, including the 2010 Haiti earthquake response, simply by sending an SMS — a system that raised tens of millions of dollars through small, instant contributions.

Croak holds over 200 patents, one of the most prolific patent records of any Black woman in American history, and later became a Vice President of Engineering at Google, leading the company's Responsible AI and Human-Centered Technology team.