[7] Bell Labs wanted to send voice, text, and video data digitally rather than using a standard phone line.

And the favored mechanism for this was Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) protocol, but Croak, along with the rest of her team, convinced AT&T to use TCP/IP instead.

She developed this technology during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and it revolutionized how people donate to charitable organizations when a natural disaster occurs.She was inspired to do this after seeing AT&T develop technology that helped American Idol set up a voting system that relied on text messages rather than voice calls, in 2003.

The technology that she created with co-inventor Hossein Eslambolchi, was not finalized until October 2005, a couple of months after Hurricane Katrina.

[11] At AT&T she managed over 2,000 engineers and computer scientists responsible for over 500 programs impacting AT&T's enterprise and consumer wireline and mobility services.

[15][16] Croak also works on racial justice efforts at Google and continues her goal of encouraging women and young girls in engineering.

[13] She is currently a member of the Corporate Advisory Board for the Viterbi School of Engineering at her alma mater, the University of Southern California.

[14] Croak is also a former board member for such organizations as the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions; Catalyst; the Holocaust and Human Rights Museum (New Jersey); and the National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering.