Dr. Marian Croak – First Living Black Female Inductee to National Inventors Hall of Fame
By: Christine Leavitt
Last month, I wrote about Dr. Patricia Bath, the first Black female historical
inductee into the National Inventors Hall of Fame (NIHF). The NIHF honors inventors each year
who have created new innovations that improve society and inspire future innovators to
transform our world, acknowledging the “enduring legacies of exceptional U.S. patent holders” (https://www.invent.org/inductees).
In September 2021, the NIHF announced that two Black women inventors who have worked in STEM fields will be inducted into the NIHF in 2022. In fact, they are the first Black women to be inducted into the NIHF.
Dr. Marian Croak, an engineer who has worked on advancing Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technologies and holds more than 200 U.S. patents, including U.S. Patent No. 7,599,359 for VoIP Technology, is the first living Black female to be inducted into the NIHF.
Dr. Marian Croak transformed the world through her inventions that have paved the way
for remote work and teleconferencing. Dr. Croak was born in 1955 in New York City. She
attended Princeton University where she earned a Bachelor’s degree in 1977, attended theUniversity of Southern California where she earned her Ph.D. in social psychology and quantitative analysis.
Dr. Croak started her career in the Human Factors research division at Bell Labs, which merged into AT&T. In this position, she sought ways that technology could be used to improve people’s lives. With this goal in mind, she transitioned to network engineering where she focused on expanding voice communication via digital telecommunications rather than through traditional phone lines. The VoIP technology that she and her team worked to develop “is vital for remote work and conferencing, as well as personal communications,” both of which proved invaluable during the COVID-19 pandemic (https://www.invent.org/inductees/marian-croak). While at AT&T, Dr. Croak became a Senior Vice President and managed “a team of over 2,000 developers, engineers, and program managers” who oversaw 500 programs, including enterprise, consumer, and mobility services services (https://www.witi.com/halloffame/319632/Marian-R.-Croak,-PhD-Senior-Vice-President,-Applications-and-Services-Infrastructure-AT&T-Labs/).
In the beginning, while working on VoIP, Dr. Croak was criticized by people who thought that “no one would ever use the ‘toy like’ technology, which wasn’t very reliable – but her team eventually made so much progress that AT&T began to use it for its core network, an accomplishment she found even more exciting because of all the doubts and criticism she had faced along the way” (https://www.npr.org/2021/09/27/1040795026/patricia-bath-marian-croak-national-inventors-hall-of-fame-first-black-women).
Following the devastation by Hurricane Katrina, Dr. Croak worked with her team to create a text-to-donate system with which over $130,000.00 of charitable donations were collected and distributed to the hurricane victims. Similarly, after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, the same system was used by donors who raised $43 million to help those who had been affected by such devastation. Dr. Croak has additionally “led a team bringing broadband to developing countries in Asia and Africa Africa'' (https://www.invent.org/inductees/marian-croak).
Dr. Croak currently leads the Research Center for Responsible AI and Human Centered
Technology at Google. She is committed to advancing racial justice efforts and has mentored
many women and girls. Outside of work, she has three children and enjoys long distance
running. She has also served on many boards, including Holocaust and Human Rights Educational
Center, Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions, Catalyst, and the National Action
Council for Minorities in Engineering.
On a Google blog, Dr. Croak wrote the following:
“I find that it inspires people when they see someone who looks like themselves on some dimension, and I'm proud to offer that type of representation. People also see that I'm just a normal person like themselves, and I think that also inspires them to accomplish their goals. I want people to understand that it may be difficult but that they can overcome obstacles and that it will be so worth it"
Written By: Christine Leavitt
Christine is a doctoral student in Gender Studies at ASU. Her research interests include the intersections of gender, religion, and mental health. Christine has worked as an attorney in the field of employment and labor law for over 12 years and as an adjunct instructor for over 7 years. In these positions, Christine has been involved in research seeking to close the low-income gap graduation rate from higher education and has worked to promote women and minorities into positions of leadership. Christine has also been given the opportunity to be a guest lecturer in Ukraine and Moldova as part of the US Build Initiative. As a mother of 6 children, including 3 girls, Christine is very passionate about gender equity in STEM, especially for girls who come from underrepresented communities and face additional barriers in STEM fields. Christine graduated with honors from BYU Law School with her Juris Doctor, and she graduated Valedictorian of her class from Southern Utah University with a B.A. in Political Science and Spanish. She loves learning, traveling, exploring the outdoors with her family, hiking, camping, paddle boarding, and meeting new people. She is an accomplished pianist and a long-distance runner.
