The tech CEO notoriously caught on a kiss cam canoodling with his company’s HR chief at a Coldplay concert has resigned.
Astronomer says chief Andy Byron has “tendered his resignation” after it was revealed the woman in the footage was not his wife and video of the horrified pair trying to duck away went viral.
“Our leaders are expected to set the standard in both conduct and accountability, and recently that standard was not met,” the company said.
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The company added that its board of directors had accepted Byron’s resignation and is now searching for his replacement. Astronomer lamented that “awareness of our company might have changed overnight” but insisted that “our product and our work for our customers have not.”
In case you’d missed it, Byron was caught on a kiss cam sharing a warm and intimate moment with Astronomer’s Chief People Officer Kristin Cabot, during a Coldplay concert on Wednesday night.
Caught on the big screen via a Jumbotron camera at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Mass., they were briefly serenaded by band frontman Christ Martin before suddenly realizing just what was happening.
Cabot responded by throwing her hands over her face. Byron crouched down and hid behind a glass pane before apparently going prone to disappear entirely from view.
The pair are married—just not to each other, something Martin seemed to intuit as he commented, “Uh oh, what? Either they are having an affair or they are just very shy.”
Neither Cabot nor Byron has spoken publicly about the incident. The HR officer is married to Andrew Cabot, CEO of Massachusetts-based rum company Privateer Rum, with whom she purchased a $2.2 million New Hampshire home just five months ago.
Byron’s wife, Megan Kerrigan, meanwhile, is reported to have changed her surname on Facebook before deleting her account altogether after a clip of the moment went viral.
By Friday, Astronomer, which provides data and production-management platforms to its clients, had placed the two top execs on leave pending the outcome of a formal internal investigation, with reports that Byron was already in the process of negotiating a resignation and exit package with the board.
