Positively connected

Lauren Emanuel: According to the studies, you are an anomaly as a woman of color in tech with multiple patents. How do we encourage and support more women and students of color of any gender to explore tech, to become inventors, and to seek patents?

Marian Croak: I think the more role models that people have, the more inspired they are to understand that they are capable of doing anything. I think the work that, that the Patent Office is doing in terms of making things more popular—like inventors—more popular for younger students so that they can understand that it's just people who are making these inventions and how important it is for them to advance the world by creating new things and understanding the problems that exist that can be addressed by solutions that they may come up with.

Lauren Emanuel: Who did you admire the most growing up?

Marian Croak: I admired my father. He did not have a formal education beyond elementary school, and yet he was very successful and extremely intelligent, and he was a great reader, and he just always inspired me to work really hard, you know, to think about things in a creative way. He gave me a lot of freedom in thinking, and, you know, he was very strongly advocating for my education and my achievements. And he was just a person who was very proud of me. So, it helped me a lot to keep going when things got difficult, to have him in my corner.

Lauren Emanuel: Over the course of your career, was there a specific time where you felt that you failed or wanted to quit? How did you continue to move forward?

Marian Croak: Yeah, there's many times when I feel like that, actually, and it's not as if it lingers for, you know, days or weeks, but when you're trying to do new things and you're trying to change things, you're going to fail a lot because it's almost like learning how to walk. You know, you're going to fall a lot. I don't know if you would call that failing, but it feels like that, you know, once you're an adult, and you don't quite understand that, you know, you need to practice something and you need to experiment with something before it actually becomes powerful enough to actually use. You know, the best thing to do sometimes is just to take a break.

I would always take breaks. I was a runner for a long time, and now I'm a walker, and just let things go, and then, then I'll come back to it and, you know, it will seem a lot better. And it's the passage of time, you know. By the next day, things always seem a bit brighter, and you can move ahead. I've always enjoyed working in teams, so I find that if you collaborate with people, you know, sometimes you'll feel discouraged and down, but your partner will not, or some teammate will be able to see a better solution or a different path. And then that helps a lot, too. I rarely work all by myself.

Lauren Emanuel: Do you mentor others?

Marian Croak: Yes. I, I spend a great deal of time mentoring people, especially as I’ve advanced in my career. I think that's one of the most important things that I do. Many people that are just starting out—it seems so daunting, and it seems like, well, how could you ever do that? People question their own confidence—their own abilities—because they just lack confidence. And I feel like it's important for me to help them understand how much they're capable of doing, and that, you know, it can be a hard journey, but it's well worth it. 

Lauren Emanuel: What advice do you have for students and young people who aspire to work in tech and to invent?

Marian Croak: I think the most important thing is try to find different areas that you are most interested in because you will need to, you know, be inspired to keep going when things are hard. And it has to be something that you're intrinsically motivated to work on. You may want to find a solution to epidemics or social injustice. There are a whole range of things that you can apply technology to help with, but just find, you know, the area that you're, you're most inspired to keep going in, despite what may be, you know, hard days or hard moments or discouraging people in your life, that you know that, kind of uniquely, that you want to solve this problem, or you want to contribute to the solution of a problem. 

I find that it's easy to inspire people to think about becoming more creative and solving problems. I think what happens is then they don't understand how to apply that to a patenting process and the steps that are involved. As much education as we can provide and also the tools to help people file patents in an easier way and have them understand what they need to do in order for something to be patentable. I think it would be great. You know, so many people that you just would never expect have these just tremendous ideas, but they don't know how, you know, to actually use the patenting systems and how to go about it. So, I think any education that can be provided along those lines would be extremely helpful to people.

Lauren Emanuel: What inspires you?

Marian Croak: The thing that inspires me the most is actually problems. You know, something that looks really hard, but realizing, okay, you know, that there are a lot of people that you can collaborate with to change the really hard problems, and the really hard problems are the ones that are most likely for people to walk away from, and so, therefore, they're the ones that most likely need the most attention. I would say that, you know, I'm inspired by something that's hard and challenging and difficult and seems impossible. That inspires me to really focus on those things.

Lauren Emanuel: What role have patents and intellectual property played in your career?

Marian Croak: It's been very rewarding and, surprisingly so. I did not realize how important they would be. It was something that I did because I enjoyed doing at the time, but then once I actually received so many patents, it made my life much easier. I no longer felt like I had to prove myself so often to people, you know, to walk in a room full of brilliant scientists and have to engage in behavior where they would understand that, you know, I was equal to them. It kind of allowed those doors to be opened. I think it helped my career mentally in surprising ways that I had not anticipated.

Lauren Emanuel: How did you take your inventions from prototype to patent?

Marian Croak: We did a lot of experimentation, you know, and those are where you think, “Oh, I'm failing, I'm failing,” and then suddenly it starts working. So I had a lab and we, we did a lot of work in the lab to prove in things. And, you know, fortunately I was in an environment where it both allowed for innovation, but you could then also quickly apply it to the world, and you could have millions of customers trying out Voice over IP before it was actually perfected, and you could keep perfecting it as it was going into service.
 
Lauren Emanuel: When was the first time that you heard the word “patent” or knew of someone obtaining a patent?

Marian Croak: That's a good question. It probably was not until I actually went to Bell Labs. The scientists that worked there and the researchers that worked there were held in esteem because of their inventions and their patents, and I think it was during those, you know, that period of time when I was first employed at Bell Labs that I understood the importance of patents.

Lauren Emanuel: What type of environments should we create to help invention thrive?

Marian Croak: People need a lot of freedom in terms of their thought processes, and they need to have a lot of different disciplines to influence the way that they're thinking. Telling people that they're wrong or focusing on their performance, you know—are you good or are you bad, are you going to get graded in a certain way—can sometimes be quite stifling to invention, where you need like creative energy to just explore various options and an alternative path. If we can allow young people and society to have as much freedom of thought as possible and understand all different types of perspectives and disciplines, I think that really encourages invention. Also, just the belief that things do need to change, that we're, you know, that everything that needs to be invented—most things that need to be invented—haven't been invented yet, and that we'll look back at this period of time and think, “Oh, how primitive it was that we did it like this,” and just to realize, you know, the possibilities that exist for the future I think is so important.

Lauren Emanuel: Looking back at the impact of your inventions, what are you most proud of?

Marian Croak: Especially during the pandemic, I think people have appreciated Voice over IP technology. So I think, you know, that's, that's been interesting to watch how easily people have been able to continue communicating even though they can't be physically close to each other. The text-to-donate has just taken on a life of its own. You know, there've been many, many enhancements to it, and, and it's, it's well used. There's been so many extensions of it, you know. Sometimes when you go to make a purchase, it will come up on the internet now. And I think that's, that's just a great thing, like on the web, you'll be able to donate very easily. And I, I think that helps all of us. It helps the world become a better place with technologies that enable people to just quickly do something that helps others.

Lauren Emanuel: You've also managed to be remarkably successful in a field that has traditionally been dominated by men.
How do you do it?

Marian Croak: I become so involved in what I'm doing that the fact that someone's a male or their physical characteristics somewhat disappears for me, and I'm just looking at, this is another person that is interested in what I'm interested in, and we're working together on it.

My inner thoughts are sometimes much more important than what's going on in the outside environment that could prohibit or discourage me from those thoughts. It's like, I want to, you know, put those thoughts into practice, and, you know, there may be many, many people in the world that would prefer that I don't do that, but it's like, that's what's driving me, is the desire to do so. And there are many people that want to help and encourage that, and so, you know, I focus on those people and rely on them.

Lauren Emanuel: You’ve previously referenced the [James] Stockdale Paradox, which Stockdale described as: "You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be." How has this paradox been applicable to your journey?

Marian Croak: Well, I think, you know, what's very important is to remain realistic about things and see kind of the worst case that can happen, but then also be willing to realize, well, that has not happened yet, and there's a way out of it. There's a way out of it. We can, we can get to a better place with either technology or, you know, some solution to problems, but you, you have to be able to confront the problem and deal with the reality of the, the intensity of the problem. And then, and only then, I think, can you actually solve it. So, I think it's extremely important to remain realistic. Look at the worst cases that can happen, not deny reality, not just hope that things are going to get better, but actually look at how bad they can become. And then from that point, I think, you know, you can be inspired to do something better and to understand what it is that you have to do.

Lauren Emanuel: Many thanks to Marian Croak for her dedication to helping others and for sharing her inspiring story with us. Because of Croak’s advancements in Voice over Internet Protocol and text-to-donate technology, we can stay even more connected despite physical distance—something that is more important now than ever before. From the USPTO, thanks for listening.