This chapter explores the process of co-designing a leadership academy at a large research-intensive university in the Western Cape, South Africa, a context characterised by pronounced disparities in power. Employing Soja’s (1996) third space epistemology as theoretical framing, this chapter adds to the Student-Staff Partnership literature by focusing on how we worked together in this third space, our student-staff partnership. We will reflect on how student-led design spaces can both catalyse transformation in the primary spaces that we inhabit and render students vulnerable when moving between third and first spaces. In our analysis, we first share students’ experiences of their first space and then describe our perceptions of the third space we co-created. We also discuss the consequences of when our first and third spaces meet. The study’s findings have implications for curriculum design and development in higher education, particularly in contexts characterised by significant power disparities.