G.G. Michelson, who was revered for breaking barriers in the workplace for women, died earlier this month at her home in New York City. She was 89. Michelson was a longtime executive of R. H. Macy & Company, and also served as an adviser to New York City mayors and often as the only female member of corporate boards.

Gertrude Geraldine Rosen was born in Jamestown, N.Y., on June 3, 1925. Following a difficult childhood that saw Michelson’s mother pass away from tuberculosis when Gertrude was just 11, as well as time spent at an orphanage, Michelson enrolled at Columbia Law School upon her graduation from Penn State University. When she graduated in 1947, most law firms had little need for female lawyers, so she focused her job search not on legal positions but on companies that employed large numbers of women, assuming that they would need executives who could bridge the gender divide. It’s then that Michelson’s career in retail got started.

Michelson signed up for R.H. Macy’s executive training program. Soon after being accepted into the program, she was named assistant to the company’s labor relations manager. Within 15 years, she was appointed vice president for employee personnel, and in 1970 she was named senior vice president of the company’s New York division for labor and consumer relations, the only woman in the division with that title.

Despite her rise up the corporate ladder, Michelson remained modest of her accomplishments, telling The New York Times in 1989, “Sometimes it’s better to let others view what you’ve achieved in historical terms, while you just do the best you can as an individual.”

As Michelson rose through the ranks at Macy’s, she spent much of her time not among saleswomen on store floors, but negotiating with sharp-elbowed — and almost invariably male — officials of the Teamsters and the other unions that represented the department store chain’s roughly 20,000 employees.

Mrs. Michelson became a director at Macy’s in 1970 and was later invited to join other corporate boards, including those of General Electric, Goodyear Tire & Rubber and Quaker Oats. She was often the first or only woman on such boards.

Mrs. Michelson is survived by her daughter, Barbara Michelson, a sister, Mildred Terr, as well as three granddaughters and four great-grandchildren. Her husband, Horace Michelson, a corporate lawyer, died in 2002.