Tela Photo
Tela Mange is a communications and marketing professional who has demonstrated strengths in crisis communications, media relations, public relations, media relations training, employee communications and strategic communications. She has extensive experience with website and social media development and in government relations.
She is a past president and board member of Women in Communications, the forerunner to Austin Women Communicators, and recipient of the group’s Austin Communicator of the Year and Outstanding Chapter Member awards, as well as PRSA Austin’s Austin Star Award.
Tela is a second-generation newspaper reporter who worked at the (now-defunct) Grand Prairie Daily News and the Austin Business Journal before moving to public relations and communications positions in the non-profit, government and corporate worlds. She’s seen the good, the bad and the unbelievable during her 40-year career.
Stints at non-profits (as publications coordinator at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center and as Vice President of Communications and Marketing at Special Olympics Texas), at corporate gigs (Southern Union Gas, plus several small tech start-ups), and in state government (Texas Department of Public Safety and Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation) give her a unique perspective on communications as a career. She’s seen the good, the bad and the ugly – as well as the unintentionally hilarious – throughout the years and can tell you stories about being a woman in business that you can’t believe are true (but are).
As the chief of media relations for the Texas Department of Public Safety from 2000 to 2012, Tela led press briefings carried live on CNN, Fox News and other major news networks and arranged dozens of media briefings about breaking news events, often with little notice. In her varied DPS career, she helped cut down marijuana plants in the Panhandle, rode in DPS helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft to various breaking-news destinations, and once drove a golf cart crammed with reporters to an airplane crash scene. In other words, she and her team became experts in crisis communications.
In 2026, Tela retired from full-time employment and joined DFW Strategic Communications as a consultant helping Texas cities with their communications needs. She also teaches crisis communications classes.
- Avery Bradt - June 30, 2025
- Jen Rios - October 16, 2023
- Ronne Rock - April 25, 2023