It was just another summer night in Foxborough. Coldplay was on stage, the crowd was buzzing, and the "kiss cam" was doing its usual rounds. But for Kristin Cabot, that 16-second spotlight at Gillette Stadium didn’t just show her face to a few thousand people—it basically blew up her entire career.
Yes, Kristin Cabot resigned.
The news didn't come immediately after that fateful July 2025 concert, but the fallout was inevitable. For those who missed the social media firestorm, Cabot was the Chief People Officer at Astronomer, a high-growth data orchestration startup. She was caught on the Jumbotron in a very cozy, very public embrace with her boss, CEO Andy Byron.
The internet, being the internet, went into a full-blown investigative frenzy.
The Coldplay Incident and Why It Mattered
When the camera landed on them, Chris Martin actually joked that they were either "having an affair" or were "just very shy." Most people would have just laughed it off. Instead, Cabot and Byron ducked. They hid. They looked like two people who absolutely did not want to be seen together.
The video went viral. 40 million views later, it wasn't just a funny concert moment; it was a massive corporate crisis.
A timeline of the exit
- July 16, 2025: The "kiss cam" moment happens.
- July 19, 2025: CEO Andy Byron resigns after the board reviews the situation.
- July 24, 2025: Astronomer confirms that Kristin Cabot has also resigned.
Honestly, the irony is what killed it. Cabot’s job was literally to build "award-winning cultures" and manage "people strategy." In her own LinkedIn bio—which people shared relentlessly—she claimed to "win trust with employees of all levels, from CEOs to assistants."
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Turns out, winning that much trust from the CEO is exactly what got her in trouble.
Why she couldn't stay
You might wonder why she had to leave. It wasn't just about the optics of two married people (to other people) being intimate at a concert. In the world of HR, there is a massive power dynamic at play. When the person in charge of employee ethics and workplace conduct is having an undisclosed relationship with the CEO, the whole system breaks.
She didn't just break a rule. She broke the "trust" she had spent 20 years building in the tech world.
Cabot later broke her silence in a December 2025 interview with The New York Times. She didn't hide behind corporate jargon. She admitted she made a "bad decision" fueled by "a couple of High Noons." She acknowledged that she had a "big happy crush" on Byron.
"I took accountability and I gave up my career for that," she told the publication. "That's the price I chose to pay."
Life after the scandal
Since her resignation, life hasn't been easy. Cabot reported receiving dozens of death threats and being "doxxed" by strangers. Paparazzi even camped outside her $2.2 million home in New Hampshire.
She's described herself as "unemployable" in the current market. It's a tough pill to swallow for someone who previously held leadership roles at big tech names like Neo4j and Proofpoint. At Neo4j, she was the one who helped the company scale from 225 to over 900 employees. She was a heavy hitter in the Silicon Valley HR scene. Now? She's a meme.
Lessons for the rest of us
What can we actually learn from this mess? It's more than just "don't cuddle your boss at a Coldplay concert."
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- The personal is professional for HR. If you are the "custodian of culture," your private actions are always under a microscope. You can't enforce a code of conduct you aren't following.
- Privacy is a myth in 2026. Every stadium has a Jumbotron, and every person in that stadium has a smartphone. If you're doing something you shouldn't be, assume you're being recorded.
- Power dynamics matter. Even if a relationship is "consensual," the hierarchy in a company makes it a liability for the business.
If you find yourself in a situation where your personal feelings are clashing with your professional role, the best move is transparency. Had Cabot or Byron disclosed their situation to the board earlier, the outcome might have been a quiet transition instead of a viral explosion.
Check your company’s conflict of interest policy today. It’s better to know the boundaries before you accidentally cross them in front of 60,000 people.