Dr. Marian Rogers Croak, known for her work in advancing Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technologies, and with more than two hundred patents to her name, is an amazing and accomplished woman. She was born in Pennsylvania in 1955. Croak lived a normal and well-adjusted lifestyle. Her father was a man of science and encouraged her to pursue science in his home laboratory. It is at this start that her love of science really blossomed. She graduated from Princeton University in 1977 and completed her doctorate in Quantitative Analysis and Psychology at the University of Southern California in 1982.
Shortly after college she began her career with one of the largest phone service providers in the country, AT&T. She saw the potential of using digital means to transmit voice traffic and advocated for the company to transition their analog phone network to digital transmission methods, known as VOIP. Her pioneering work led to her being granted over one hundred patents for VOIP and related technology, inventions that allow us to make voice and video calls and utilize multimedia sessions over internet protocol (IP) networks.
She also led work that enabled the use of donations and voting to be done through phone network services. This breakthrough came about when AT&T partnered with American Idol for voting via text message. The same technology later aided in raising over thirty million dollars for disaster relief in Haiti during the earthquake of 2010.
Croak was awarded numerous awards and certificates for her inventions and patents. In 2013, she was inducted into the Women in Technology Hall of Fame and was also selected as Chairperson of a standards organization known as the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions. The following year she was the recipient of the Black Engineer of the Year award.
In 2014, she joined Google as a Vice President of Engineering. Her work there has allowed Google to expand into markets they previously had not tapped into. Croak was also the leader of a team who started the beginning phase of the communications technology for Project Loon. This is a project using balloons to extend network coverage. She also led the installation of Wi-Fi throughout India’s railway system, a daunting task due the extreme weather and high population density in the country.
Her work has been a great inspiration for many of her peers and colleagues during her time at Google. Since 2017, she has assumed responsibility for reliability engineering for many of the services provided by Google. She also serves on the Board of Directors for the Centre for Holocaust, Human Rights and Genocide Education. Croak is also a member of the Advisory Board for the University of Southern California. She is a proud mother of three children, two sons and a daughter. She continues to be an immense inspiration and a driving force behind many of the technological advances we utilize and depend on today. In 2021 it was announced that she was going to be one of the first two Black women to be inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame alongside Dr. Patricia Bath. She remains a continued source of inspiration and innovation for young women all over the world.
