How an Engineer Moved Voice Onto the Internet
Dr. Marian Croak, born in 1955, is an American engineer whose work helped move human communication onto the internet. She is widely recognized as a pioneer of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), the technology that carries voice calls over internet connections rather than over the traditional telephone network.
Traditional phone systems set up a dedicated line between two callers for the length of a call. VoIP works differently: it converts the analog sound of a voice into digital data, breaks that data into small units called packets, and sends those packets across the internet to be reassembled into sound at the other end. Because the internet can route each packet along whatever path is available, this approach uses network capacity more flexibly than a dedicated line. The same underlying method now powers the video conferencing and internet calling applications that billions of people rely on.
Croak's contributions are reflected in her patents. She holds more than 200 patents, and roughly 135 of them relate to VoIP. A patent is a legal record that identifies a person as the inventor of a new idea or method. Beyond voice technology, she invented 'text-to-donate,' a system that lets people contribute to a charity by sending a text message to a short code. It was used widely to raise relief funds after disasters, including Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the 2010 earthquake in Haiti.
Croak spent decades at AT&T, where much of her VoIP work took place, before joining Google as a Vice President of Engineering. At Google she has led teams working on major challenges, including a group focused on Responsible AI, which examines how artificial intelligence systems can be built and used ethically.
In 2022, Croak was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame, becoming one of the few Black women to receive that recognition. Her career demonstrates how a single engineer's inventions, from internet calling to text-based giving, can reshape both everyday communication and the way communities respond to crises.
