Marian Croak

The next time you make a video call, remember: a Black woman in the ‘80s made it possible.

In 1982, Marian Croak joined Bell Labs with a PhD in quantitative analysis and social psychology from USC.

She started in Human Factors Research.

Her job: figure out how tech could make life better for real people.

At the time, the modern internet didn’t exist.

But she saw what was coming.

Most telecom companies were betting on ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) to transmit voice, video, and text.

Marian said no.

She pushed AT&T to adopt TCP/IP, the protocol that still powers the internet today.

Then she went further…

What if your voice could travel as digital data?

What if a phone call didn’t need a phone line?

That’s how she helped invent the foundations of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP).

She worked on quality control, latency, and how to make voice over the internet sound human.

Clear, fast, and consistent.

Then came her second breakthrough: text-to-donate.

In 2003, Marian saw AT&T build a text voting system for American Idol.

Fans could vote via SMS.

She had a thought: if people can vote by text, why can’t they donate too?

In 2005, after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, she and co-inventor Hossein Eslambolchi built it.

It raised $130,000 for relief organizations.

Five years later, after the Haiti earthquake, the same system raised $43M via mobile donations.

She received a U.S. patent for it: “Method and Apparatus for Dynamically Debiting a Donation.”

In 2013, she was awarded the Thomas Edison Patent Award for it.

In total, she holds over 200 patents, with nearly half related to VoIP.

By the time she left AT&T in 2014, she was Senior Vice President of Applications and Services Infrastructure, overseeing 2,000 engineers and more than 500 projects in enterprise mobility and consumer wireline tech.

Then she joined Google.

There, she became VP of Engineering.

She helped bring broadband to underserved communities across Africa and Asia.

She launched Google’s Center for Responsible AI and Human-Centered Technology, building ethical frameworks for the future of artificial intelligence.

Her team isn’t just optimizing models.

They’re applying AI to real-world problems:
– Maternal health monitoring in developing nations
– Early disease detection
– Climate impact mitigation
– Making tech safer and more inclusive

In her words: “AI can amplify the worst stereotypes and spread misinformation. It has to serve the deepest needs of humanity.”

In 2022, she was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame, the National Academy of Engineering, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.