Caterina Rizzoni is a practicing industrial designer and design researcher living in Cincinnati, OH. She is a Lead Industrial Designer at Kaleidoscope Innovation, an Infosys Company, where she leads cross-functional teams that create intuitive and innovative solutions centering usability for clients in med-tech, robotics, and consumer goods.

She has served as the At-Large Director of Conferences on IDSA’s Board of Directors since 2021, working alongside IDSA Staff to host conferences and ensure that the organization’s National events portfolio meets the needs of IDSA members. She has also served as Chair of the IDSA Cincinnati chapter, Vice Chair of the IDSA Columbus chapter, and VP of the IDSA Student Chapter at The Ohio State State University.

Caterina is a passionate community-builder with experience creating meaningful event-based programming for a variety of organizations. She has been actively committed to building IDSA at both the local and national level. Some of her work for IDSA includes developing the Taboo Schmaboo event series with the Columbus Chapter, and the Ohio cross-Chapter collaboration series Blurred Lines. She has also collaborated with organizations like the World Design Organization, Advanced Design, and Unif-ID on a variety of other events.

Caterina co-founded Design Allyship in late 2019 to provide designers with actionable resources to improve the condition of historically marginalized designers in the industrial and product design industry. The organization provides spaces dedicated to dialogue and discourse about the lived experiences of people of different backgrounds, and tools to enable allyship for all who wish to better the community.

She serves as a mentor in both formal and informal settings, including in Advanced Design's Offsite mentorship program, Unif-ID, and Startup Weekend, and is a vocal advocate for equitable and accessible design education. She also volunteers with undergraduate design programs including UC DAAP, Pratt, MIAD, CCAD, OSU, and CIA to critique and mentor students and share insight into professional practice.

Caterina holds a BS in Industrial Design with a minor in Art History from The Ohio State University. When she’s not designing, you can find her building tiny house kits or cooking with her partner, Atticus.