Just days after Astronomer CEO Andy Byron stepped down, the HR executive who was with him at the now-infamous Coldplay concert has also departed the company.
“Kristin Cabot is no longer with Astronomer, she has resigned,” a company spokesperson wrote in an email to CNBC Thursday. Cabot was the company’s chief people officer.
Cabot and Byron, who is married with children, were caught on the “kiss cam” sharing an intimate moment at a recent Coldplay concert in Boston. When they noticed their faces on the big screen, they quickly ducked out of view. Coldplay frontman Chris Martin joked, “Either they’re having an affair or they’re just very shy.” A video of the moment was recorded by an attendee and quickly went viral.
Byron resigned from his role as CEO on Saturday. Both he and Cabot have since been removed from Astronomer’s leadership page.
Earlier this week, interim CEO Pete DeJoy commented that the unexpected viral attention had turned the company into “a household name.”
Astronomer is a tech company based in New York that helps businesses manage and organize their data. It offers a platform called Astro, which is built on Apache Airflow and allows data teams to build, run, and monitor data pipelines more easily. The company works with major clients like Ford, Adobe, Uber, and Apple. In 2025, Astronomer raised $93 million in new funding and was valued at around $1.3 billion. Its goal is to help companies get more value from their data using reliable and scalable tools.
Kristin Cabot joined Astronomer in November 2024 as Chief People Officer, bringing over 20 years of HR experience and a BA in Political Science from Gettysburg College. Her hiring was praised by then-CEO Andy Byron for her leadership and expertise in talent management during a period of rapid company growth. Previously divorced from Kenneth Thornby, with whom she shares a child.
She is now married to Andrew Cabot, CEO of Privateer Rum and a descendant of a prominent Boston Brahmin family. The couple resides in a multimillion-dollar home in Rye, New Hampshire, and she has served on his company’s advisory board since around 2020.
