While the numbers of African American and Latinx students have increased in higher education over the last several decades, African Americans and Latinx students experience college different from their peers. A specific area where African American and Latinx students experience college in distinct ways is around their co-curricular involvement and leadership. This study seeks to fully understand the phenomenon of leadership and mentorship for African American and Latinx students. In order to explore the lived experiences of participants, I conducted two semi-structured, in-depth interviews of students and one interview of their identified mentor. I focused on an interview protocol that provided the opportunity for participants to elucidate their leadership and mentorship experiences to allow for enhanced descriptions of the phenomenon. The 12 student participants were mostly upperclassmen and identified as African American or Latinx. Four university staff members were interviewed as students' identified mentors. The data from the was situated in three major themes and subthemes related to student leadership and mentorship experiences. The first theme of leadership focused on the experiences of students of color in leadership roles and had subthemes of learning while leading, leadership identity dissonance, cultural safe spaces, and leadership for service and change. The second theme of mentorship explored the lived experiences of students and staff involved in mentorship and found subthemes of unintentional connections, authentic human interactions, guidance, and supporting and creating opportunities as integral to participants. The final and major theme of developing leadership through mentorship highlighted the intersections of mentorship and leadership with subthemes of role modeling, leadership through student employment, mentors normalizing experiences, cycles of care and belonging, and intersections between identity and leadership development. The findings from this study underline the importance of mentors in the leadership development experiences of African American and Latinx student leaders. The findings offer important insight for colleges and universities to utilize as they encourage mentorship for students of color and focus more on the leadership of African American and Latinx students. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2222/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]