“The inquiry ended, the memes didn’t”: Kristin Cabot on leaving Astronomer after kiss-cam row

“The inquiry ended, the memes didn’t”: Kristin Cabot on leaving Astronomer after kiss-cam row

Kristin Cabot says Astronomer asked her to return to the job she once held as head of human resources after the company wrapped up its internal review of the Coldplay “kiss cam” episode that blew up online. The investigation, she told The New York Times, concluded without finding that she violated company policy. Astronomer, in her telling, saw the matter as finished. She did not.

The incident, which spread rapidly across social media and then into mainstream coverage, centred on a concert “kiss cam” moment involving Astronomer’s then-CEO Andy Byron. Cabot’s appearance in the footage drew her into the storm. What followed was weeks of commentary, jokes and speculation that she says changed how people saw her, regardless of what the company’s process found.

Cabot told the Times that once you become a character in a viral narrative, the terms of the conversation shift. An internal clearance may settle the question inside a company. Online, it rarely settles anything. She described herself as a “laughingstock” and said the gap between a formal outcome and public perception made the idea of returning to the same leadership role feel unrealistic.

“I couldn’t imagine standing up as HR chief when that was the perception,” she told the newspaper.

Her point was not that Astronomer’s investigation was meaningless. It was that HR leadership depends on a kind of authority that can be fragile, especially when a person becomes the subject of ridicule. In most organisations, HR chiefs are expected to model conduct standards, run sensitive investigations, and enforce policy calls that often make employees unhappy. Cabot argued that doing that job while the internet continued to treat her as a punchline would have been a daily credibility problem, not a one-time public relations issue.

Instead of going back, she said she negotiated her departure. Her resignation was announced on July 24, formally closing her chapter at the company. Astronomer has not publicly challenged her description of being invited to return after the inquiry concluded, and has said previously that it handled the matter through an internal process.

Cabot’s decision also underlines a broader tension in corporate crises. Companies can investigate conduct, document outcomes and move forward. Public judgment runs on a different clock. It is faster, harsher and hard to correct once it takes hold.

The kiss-cam episode ultimately cost Astronomer its CEO, with Andy Byron stepping down amid the fallout. Cabot’s exit shows another kind of fallout: even without an internal finding of wrongdoing, returning to a senior role can become impossible when the damage is reputational, not procedural.