Exec Caught on Coldplay ‘Kiss Cam’ with Boss Has Been Told She’s ‘Unemployable’

Kristin Cabot, the woman involved in the viral Coldplay “kiss cam” moment with her boss, is having a hard time finding work following the controversy that altered her personal and professional life earlier this year.

Breaking her silence for the first time since the scandal through interviews with The New York Times and the U.K.’s The Times, Cabot, 53, recalled how the moment with Andy Byron, Astronomer’s former CEO, left her to deal with public shaming, harassment and threats, and also cost her her job.

Cabot told The Times that she has been actively looking for another job, but claimed she has been told she is “unemployable” in the wake of the false assumption that she’d had an affair with Byron.

“It has been like a scarlet letter; people erased everything I’d accomplished in my life and achieved in my career,” she said. “This can’t be the final word.”

The mom of two served as Astronomer’s chief people officer, a role she began in November 2024.

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After Astronomer concluded an internal investigation into the Coldplay saga, Cabot told The New York Times the company asked her to return to her role, but she declined and opted to instead negotiate her resignation.

“I could not imagine how I could stand up as H.R. chief when I was a laughingstock,” she told the outlet.

Cabot echoed a similar statement to The Times, explaining, “There was a lot of noise around me not taking accountability, but what actually happened is the board said, ‘Please stay.’ And I said, ‘How, given my job is to be the one to show people how we are expected to behave, our standards, our values?’ ”

“If it hadn’t turned into what it did online, I could have stood up and said, ‘It was a really bad decision and I regret it. I’m so sorry for the position I put you all in, but I’m committed to this place’ and stayed in my job,” she continued.

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According to The New York Times, Cabot began her career in advertising and sales before moving to human resources.

She told the publication that she has a strong work ethic, explaining that she will “go through a brick wall to get something done.” Her friend Alyson Welch, who worked with her at the tech company neo4j, said Cabot always came off as “hyper-professional.”

Hitting back at claims that her hard work over the years wasn’t the reason for her successful career trajectory, Cabot told The New York Times that accusations she was “sleeping around” anger her.

“I spent so much of my career pulling men’s hands off my ass,” Cabot — who has worked since she was 13 years old, per the outlet — explained.

Cabot and Byron were with friends at the Coldplay show at Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, Mass., on July 16 when they were shown together on the “kiss cam,” with his arms wrapped around her. Both promptly tried to hide from view, and Chris Martin joked from the stage that they might be having an “affair.”

Byron eventually resigned from his role at Astronomer, and the company said after he stepped down that “our leaders are expected to set the standard in both conduct and accountability, and recently, that standard was not met.”

Cabot told The Times that she was going through a marital separation at the time of the Coldplay concert. She was already in the middle of divorcing Andrew Cabot, but the status of Byron’s relationship remains unclear.

In her New York Times interview, she claimed that Byron had indicated he was also separating from his wife, Megan. (He has never commented publicly, and he and his wife were seen in public together in September with their wedding rings.) That night at the concert was the only time Cabot and Byron kissed, she said.

Contact with Byron has been minimal since one final meeting in September, Cabot said. She told The New York Times the pair determined that “speaking with each other was going to make it too hard for everyone to move on and heal.”