I once read an article claiming, with quite valid points, that the future of world economy rests on the shoulders of women entrepreneurs. It is a known fact that of all women in every race, the African woman is the most creative and entrepreneurial. Sadly, few people know about the truly great African women of our time and times past. This article is about such a woman of power. Marian Croak.
Majority have no idea that Marian Croak, a Black woman, created the VOIP, also known as Voice Over Internet Protocol. This groundbreaking technology allows people to efficiently communicate through audio and/or video over the the internet. In fact, it’s the very technology used for services like Skype, Google Voice, Vonage, and more.
Little is known about the early life of Marian R. Croak. Â She was born in 1955 in Pennsylvania, grew up in New York City, and has spoken about how her father was often an influence in her success in that throughout her childhood, he pushed her to pursue her passion for science through as many creative ways as possible, such as building a chemistry lab in their home. Croak attended the University of California and Princeton University, graduating with a Ph.D. in Qualitative Analysis and Social Psychology in 1982.
In the same year, Dr. Croak joined AT&T Bell Laboratories where she served in various positions until September 2014. Within her positions, Dr. Croak completed a variety of assignments, including working with voice and data communication. Dr. Croak holds over 200 patents in several areas but the majority are in VOIP, where she has received about 100 patents. With this technology, Dr. Croak has helped advance technology, including calling and text messaging on cellular phones. Dr. Croak also has about 200 more patents which are under review. Altogether, Dr. Croak has applied for and been granted over 350 patents.
Marian said that when the internet first become popular, she predicted that IP and the internet “were going to explode.” She thus felt a need to start developing technology that would “transform the internet”. And she did exactly that!
Today there is a billion dollar industry based on the VOIP technology. There are hundreds of companies worldwide that offer VOIP services. The concept of federated VoIP was born which allows dynamic interconnection between users on any two domains on the Internet when a user wishes to place a call.
With this technology, calls and SMS text messages can be sent over mobile data or Wi-Fi using VOIP phones (software-based softphones or hardware devices), personal computers and tablets.
Throughout her career, Dr. Croak worked her way up the ladder within AT&T Bell Laboratories. Among her positions, she held the title of Vice President of the Services Network in Research and Development.  In this position, Dr. Croak was responsible for over 200 programs dealing with AT&T’s wireline and wireless services. She was also supervisor to over 500 world-class engineers and computer scientists, who would help Dr. Croak run the programs.
Dr. Croak was then promoted to the rank of AT&T’s Senior Vice President of Applications & Services Infrastructure. With this title, her responsibilities grew to supervise over 2,000 computer scientists and engineers. The number of programs she helped manage grew from 200 to over 500. Dr. Croak would not only mentor her staff but was also in charge of development, testing, service planning, and product realization.
In 2014, Dr. Marian Croak left AT&T Labs after over three decades of revolutionary work and started working for Google as their Vice President for research and development for access strategy and emerging markets. Here, Dr. Croak is responsible for expanding what the internet is capable of doing around the world. For instance, Dr. Croak is passionate about getting the internet into areas of the world where there is none.
In 2013, Dr. Marian R. Croak was inducted into the Women in Technology International’s Hall of Fame. On top of her accomplishments, Dr. Croak also serves on the Holocaust, Genocide and Human Rights Education Center’s board.
