Karim Rashid was born in Cairo, Egypt in 1960; Half-English, half Egyptian and raised mostly in Canada. He received a Bachelor of Industrial Design in 1982 from Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. He pursued graduate design studies in Naples, Italy, with Ettore Sottsass and others, then moved to Milan for one year at the Rodolfo Bonetto Studio. He opened his own practice in New York City in 1993.