Croak grew up in New York City . She attended Princeton University and completed her doctoral studies at the University of Southern California in 1982 , specialising in social psychology and quantitative analysis . She joined AT&T at Bell Labs in 1982 . She advocated for switching from wired phone technology to internet protocol . She holds over two hundred patents , including over one hundred in relation to Voice over IP . She pioneered the use of phone network services to make it easy for the public to donate to crisis appeals . When AT&T partnered with American Idol to use a text message voting system , 22 % of viewers learned to text to take part in the show . She filed the patent for text based donations to charity in 2005 . This capability revolutionised how people can donate money to charitable organisations : for example , after the 2010 Haiti earthquake at least $ 22 million was pledged in this fashion . She led the Domain 2.0 Architecture and managed over 2,000 engineers
2010 Haiti earthquake
2010 Haiti earthquake
Marian Croak