The Little Local Conversation podcast gets in depth with a variety of people in Watertown, and recent episodes have focused on a woman who imports coffee from her home country, one of the people behind the City of Watertown’s 311 Service Center, and a founding member of a Watertown-based theatre company.
Little Local Conversations is hosted by Matt Hanna. Along with his profiles, he also does periodic updates about Watertown’s local government and the arts scene.
Hanna provided the following details about recent episodes.
Benita Chelagat (Coffee Plus 254)
Meet Benita Chelagat! She’s a Watertown resident and founder of Coffee Plus 254, a Kenyan coffee brand. In this conversation we talk about growing up in Kenya, splitting time between the capital city, Nairobi, and her grandma’s farm in Kericho. Then we get into her moving to the US for school and her coffee journey. You’ll hear about her getting to know farmers back home in Kenya and their challenges with the coffee business and how Benita’s set herself up to try and bridge the gap between those farmers and the roasters and market here in the U.S.
Laura Murray (Constituent Services Director, City of Watertown)
Meet Laura Murray! She’s the Constituent Services Director for the city of Watertown, which means she runs the 311 service center. In this conversation we chat about her early customer service lessons from a pizza shop to insurance call centers where she discovered she enjoys helping people even through their angry or confused moments. Then we get into what is 311, what went into launching the service, what are the most frequent questions she gets, success stories, and things she’s learned through answering questions about city processes every day.
Episode 73: Sarah Newhouse (Actors’ Shakespeare Project)
Meet Sarah Newhouse! She’s a Watertown resident and founding company member of Actors’ Shakespeare Project, a longstanding Boston-area theater company that is now company-in-residence at the Mosesian Center for the Arts. In this conversation we get into Sarah’s career from her first lead at 11 in The Saving of Little Sarah (a play her music teacher wrote), to being taught in high school by the playwright of Driving Miss Daisy, sharing the stage with Cicely Tyson and Hector Elizondo in the Berkshires, and having an inside joke with Steve Martin when she acted in the East Coast premiere of one of his plays. We chat about the long road to “making it”, including what it’s like to be thrown into a long-running show like Shear Madness, and starting Actors’ Shakespeare Project over 20 years ago. Then we talk about what Actors’ Shakespeare Project is, a bit of its journey, and its upcoming play, Little Women.
Local Government Update, February 2026
Listen to the latest conversation with Tyler Cote, the Community Engagement Specialist for the City of Watertown, and Victoria Weichel from WCA-TV to discuss things that have happened during the past month in Watertown through key moments, success stories, and important numbers.
Get to Know Your Local: Public Arts & Culture (February 2026)
Want to know how ideas get turned into murals, festivals, and even a river race? I sat down with Watertown’s Public Arts and Culture Planner, Liz Helfer, to get a look into what’s coming up for projects, but also to shed a little light on the process behind public art: where concepts start, how partners align, and why the best projects involve conversation between neighbors and experts.