“I made a foul determination and had a few High Noons and danced and acted inappropriately with my boss,” she stated. “And it’s not nothing. And I took accountability and I gave up my profession for that. That’s the worth I selected to pay. I need my youngsters to know which you can make errors, and you’ll actually screw up. But you don’t should be threatened to be killed for them.”
Cabot got here to human sources by promoting and gross sales and all the time offered herself as “hyper-professional,” stated her good friend Alyson Welch, who labored along with her on the tech firm neo4j.
When, in 2024, Cabot interviewed with Andy Byron, on the time Astronomer’s CEO, she discovered they “clicked, stylistically.” She began as Astronomer’s chief individuals officer in November.
Cabot filed for divorce from Andrew Cabot, who launched a press release confirming that they’d been separated on the time of the live performance and asking for privateness.Credit: NYT
In 2025, whereas grabbing a sandwich close to Astronomer’s New York workplace, Cabot made reference to her marriage “in a tone,” as she remembers it, and Byron requested what was up. She was going by a separation, she stated. It was aggravating, and she or he anxious about her youngsters.
“I’m going by the identical factor,” she recalled him saying. Reached by cellphone, Byron declined to be interviewed for this text.
For Cabot, the shared acknowledgment “form of strengthened our connection,” she stated, and an in depth working relationship grew even nearer. At work, they shared confidences and made one another snicker, and for Cabot “massive emotions” grew quick. She started to permit herself to think about the romantic prospects, although she knew she couldn’t hold reporting to Byron if the connection progressed.
Cabot’s separation from her husband was nonetheless new when she agreed to go together with pals to see Coldplay. She appreciated the band properly sufficient, however what actually appealed was being out, with pals, on a summer season Wednesday. “I hadn’t been out in ages,” she informed me. She requested Byron to be her plus one.
Before the live performance, Cabot and Byron met up with a small group of Cabot’s shut pals on the Stockyard, an old-school steak joint. The vibe of the night was open and giddy, agreed two attendees who requested to be nameless due to what they noticed occur to their good friend.
Was any a part of her involved about this outing from an HR perspective? “Some inside a part of my mind may need been leaping up and down and waving its arms, saying, ‘Don’t do that’,” Cabot replied. But, usually, “No.” She was “pumped” to introduce Byron to her pals. “I used to be like: ‘I received this. I can have a crush. I can deal with it.’” On the journey to Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts, Cabot discovered, by textual content, that her soon-to-be former husband was attending the live performance, too. “It threw me,” she conceded. But she and Byron “weren’t an merchandise”.
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The seats had been on a VIP balcony providing a sweeping view of the stage. Cabot remembers that the setting felt darkish and personal. She and Byron every had a few tequila cocktails, and because the live performance went on they started to seem like a pair. She made a degree of claiming that evening was the primary and solely time they kissed. Byron was dancing behind Cabot when she took his palms and wrapped his arms round her.
When Cabot noticed her personal picture, and his, on the Jumbotron, it was like “somebody flipped a swap,” she stated. “I’ll by no means be capable to clarify it in any articulate or clever method,” she stated. What an prompt earlier than felt like “pleasure, pleasure, pleasure” turned to terror. Cabot’s palms flew to her face, and she or he whirled out of Byron’s arms. Byron ducked.
At that second, she had two ideas. First: Andrew Cabot was someplace at midnight stadium and she or he didn’t wish to humiliate him.
And: “Andy’s my boss.”
“I used to be so embarrassed and so horrified,” she stated. “I’m the pinnacle of HR and he’s the CEO. It’s, like, so cliche and so unhealthy.” Cabot and Byron fled again to the bar. “We each simply sat there with our heads in our palms, like, ‘What simply occurred?’” Even earlier than leaving the stadium, they started to debate easy methods to handle their public transgression. “And the preliminary dialog was, ‘We have to inform the board.’”
Cabot has an condo within the Boston space for when she has custody of her youngsters, and she or he and Byron went there to strategise. Who would write the e-mail? What would it not say? In her thoughts’s eye, she noticed the lack of her job and problems in her amicable parting with Andrew Cabot, whom her kids adored.
And, then, about 4am, Cabot acquired a textual content. It was a screenshot of a TikTok.
She drove to see her youngsters, who had been staying with their father in Boston. She needed to speak to them about what occurred earlier than they heard it elsewhere. “They knew who Andy was, clearly,” she informed me, “and I stated, ‘He and I received very swept up in a second, and now it’s on social media.’” Her daughter, who was 14, began to cry.
Then she drove again to her condo for a convention name with the Astronomer board. In that dialog, she remembers, they stated: “Listen. We’re human beings. We all make errors. But you perceive we’ve got to step away and discuss this and determine it out.” The firm quickly started an investigation.
On Saturday, Byron resigned. Cabot didn’t sleep. She spent the weekend pacing, crying and speaking on the cellphone. It felt to her that each producer from each tv information present was texting. At some level that weekend, Cabot was doxxed, and her cellphone flooded.
Andy Byron and his chief individuals officer Kristin Cabot and (proper) Chris Martin.
She had safety cameras put in at her home, and native police boosted their surveillance. After Astronomer concluded its investigation, the corporate requested Cabot to return to her function, she stated. But she couldn’t think about how she may arise as HR chief when she was a laughingstock. She negotiated her resignation, which was introduced on July 24. (Astronomer declined to remark for this text.)
Late summer season introduced some reduction. Cabot filed for divorce from Andrew Cabot, who launched a press release confirming that they’d been separated on the time of the live performance and asking for privateness. (He didn’t reply to requests for remark. “He has been nothing however a gentleman,” Cabot stated.) She discovered therapists for the kids, who went again to highschool and had been handled with kindness there.
She and Byron had been in contact all summer season. They exchanged information about Astronomer and updates on their households. In early September, they met and agreed that “talking with one another was going to make it too onerous for everybody to maneuver on and heal,” Cabot informed me. Since then, she stated, their contact has been minimal.
Cabot desires to rebut the idea that she slept her technique to the highest. She has labored from the age of 13, having determined she by no means needed to rely financially on a person or fear, as her mom did, a few heating invoice.
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In the center of the worst of it, when she was hiding in her bed room, she had a fantasy of redemption. Cabot wished for somebody with visibility and energy to interrupt the spinning, limitless, ruthless cycle. She yearned for a rational voice to step in and say, “Wait a minute,” as she informed me. “Can we begin a dialog the place there is likely to be room for a distinct model of this story? This has gotten actually wild.”
This article initially appeared in The New York Times.
