Karim Rashid was born in 1960 in Cairo, Egypt, and raised in Canada, where his family emigrated when he was five. He received a Bachelor of Industrial Design in 1982 from Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario. He pursued graduate design studies in Naples, Italy, under Ettore Sottsass before moving to Milan to work at the Rodolfo Bonetto Studio. From 1984, Rashid spent seven years with KAN Industrial Designers in Canada, where he designed x-ray equipment and various small objects.