New England Regional Developers, Inc purpose is to organize, educate and advance the skills of web designers and developers in the New England region. It seeks to do this primarily through nurturing a self-sustaining mentoring community for its local IT industry. NERDs has identified and defined the major issues facing its community and industry today. The most visible symptom of these issues is the growing talent gap in the field of IT. NERDs believes that our IT teams are not as strong as they could be due to irrationalities lingering from society's past. Using proven techniques to achieve better diversity and inclusion in IT, the NERDs project identifies areas of the population that have a harder time making it into IT careers and works to remove those challenges or barriers.